Ian's Blog

  In Kenya, poverty is not an accident. Concentrated wealth is not a natural outcome. Inequality is not something that “just happens.” These are policy choices made by those in power, and since 2013 those choices have repeatedly favoured political patronage, elite enrichment, and reckless borrowing over broad‑based economic empowerment. The result has been rising unemployment, growing poverty, spiralling national debt, and public resources siphoned off into private coffers. The evidence is in the trail of scandals that have marked Kenya’s recent economic history. One of the most egregious examples is the Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dam scandal , a project sold to Kenyans as transformative infrastructure but which became emblematic of mismanagement and corruption. Kenya borrowed tens of billions of shillings to fund these dams — only for the projects to stall and be cancelled amid allegations of irregularities and financial misconduct. The Auditor‑General’s reports show that Kenya d...

African social media audiences, including Kenyans, are not unintelligent. They are being conditioned. What many mistake for a lack of depth, short attention spans, or an appetite for “low-quality content” is not an organic reflection of African minds—it is the predictable outcome of an information ecosystem designed elsewhere, optimized for extraction rather than empowerment. When Africans engage with Western-controlled digital platforms, the relationship is fundamentally unequal. It mirrors the old colonial logic: extract value, shape behavior, and suppress self-definition. This conditioning is particularly visible in Kenya. Observe the proliferation of social media personalities, pages, and news accounts that thrive on scandal, gossip, celebrity drama, and outrage. These trends are not accidental reflections of Kenyan culture—they are curated. They sell, and so they dominate feeds. Content that triggers immediate emotional reaction or short-term virality is promoted, while content t...

  For generations, society has been told that morality is the child of religion—that without scripture, clergy, commandments, rituals, and divine consequences, human beings would descend into chaos. The argument insists that only belief in a higher power can tame the darker impulses of human nature. Yet when you observe the real world honestly, a more uncomfortable truth emerges: morality has never been the exclusive property of religion. In fact, some of the most empathetic, respectful, and fair-minded individuals are those who are not driven by religious dogma at all. This raises an essential question: Is morality possible without religion? And more importantly, why do so many non-religious or agnostic individuals often demonstrate more human decency than the devout? In Kenya, this question is even more relevant. We are a deeply religious nation—churches on every corner, crusades every weekend, prophets on every billboard, and prayer meetings on every problem. Yet, ironically, w...

  One of the most dangerous assumptions in any society is the belief that legality and morality are the same thing. They are not. They never have been. History is full of moments where the law—the very instrument meant to protect justice—was instead used to justify cruelty, inequality, and exploitation. It was once legal to buy and sell human beings. It was legal to deny women the right to vote. It was legal to colonize nations, seize land, and silence entire populations. Legality has always been shaped not by what is right, but by who holds power at a particular moment in time. And whenever we confuse legality with righteousness, we give power the ability to disguise oppression as order. The idea that law equals morality is appealing because it simplifies life. It allows people to outsource their conscience, believing that as long as they follow the rules, they are good citizens. But laws are written, amended, and enforced by human beings—fallible, biased, and often driven by self...

  Human beings carry many faces, but none more layered than the face a man wears before the world. Society teaches men to project strength, certainty, and control, even when life is pulling them in the opposite direction. We admire confident men, follow decisive men, listen to assertive men—but rarely ask what lies beneath those performances. The truth is that every man carries an internal landscape far more complex than the mask he wears daily. And if you would truly like to know what men really are, the moment of revelation comes not when they are comfortable, victorious, or in control, but when they stand in danger or in doubt. It is in those fragile junctures where the truth of a man rises from the depths of the heart, shattering the practiced mask and revealing the reality beneath. Danger exposes what comfort conceals. When a man is threatened—physically, emotionally, socially, or financially—the instincts buried under layers of performance come to the surface. Some men show c...

For decades, Kenyans have faithfully paid taxes with the belief that these contributions form the backbone of a functioning nation. In principle, taxes are supposed to guarantee public goods—healthcare, education, water, electricity, infrastructure, and security. They are the social contract through which a population entrusts its government with the responsibility of managing shared resources for collective benefit. Yet the lived reality in Kenya creates a troubling contradiction: even after paying some of the highest taxes relative to income in Africa, citizens still finance nearly all essential services from their own pockets. The result is a deeply unfair system where taxpayers carry a double burden—one through the official tax system, another through private spending for services the state has failed to provide. This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: what exactly are we paying taxes for? Consider healthcare. Every Kenyan knows that walking into a public hospital oft...

  In today’s world, the family unit is under attack from forces both subtle and overt. From media narratives to economic incentives, social engineering, and ideological campaigns, the traditional family structure is increasingly fragile. While much attention is given to the cultural consequences of broken families, fewer people consider the beneficiaries of this instability. Yet, if we follow the thread, the picture is clear: corporations, governments, the dating and entertainment industry, social engineers, the mental health sector, and influencers all profit when families fail to form and endure. Herein, I examine who benefits and how, when society drifts away from stable family structures. Corporations Win When People Stay Single and Lonely A society of isolated, single individuals is a corporate goldmine. Corporations have learned to monetize loneliness, selling products, services, and experiences that would be unnecessary if stable families existed. Consider the economics of l...