Patrick Gathara

For many developing countries outsourcing is the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme. The lure of a half trillion dollar market, 85% of which is unaddressed, is irresistible. The industry has grown exponentially in the last few years, by a massive 65% between 2005 and 2009. At $220 billion, the Business Process Outsourcing and Offshoring sector takes up nearly half of the total addressable market for industry, less than 11% of which has been exploited. It is this that is whetting many appetites.

Kenya has announced her intention to stake a claim to a piece of this pie. BPO has been identified as… ( Read on! )

Last year, Kenya experienced the worst food crisis in her history, more than 10 million facing the prospect of starvation. In a letter to the IMF in May 2009, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and central bank Governor Njuguna Ndungu blamed it all on three “shocks” namely the post-election violence in early 2008 which impacted negatively on key sectors of our economy such as tourism, manufacturing, transport and agriculture, resulting in a year-on-year decline in real GDP of 1 percent in the first quarter of 2008; record high fuel and fertilizer prices; and the failure of the short rains… ( Read on! )

Few issues have generated as much heat in recent African affairs as China’s foray onto the continent. Much has been made of the dragon’s insatiable hunger for the continent’s mineral wealth. The breadth of Chinese involvement has focused minds in the West and provoked much media hyperbole. However, at the same time, the Middle Kingdom’s great rival from North America has been active as well, though her activities seem not to attract as much attention. No, I’m not talking about the USA. Rather the other North American superpower – Canada.

Yes. Canada. Soft, unassuming Canada… ( Read on! )

With a dairy cattle population estimated at nearly 7 million, the largest such herd in Africa and more than the rest of the countries in East and Southern Africa combined, Kenya is the third-largest milk producer in Africa, behind Sudan and Egypt. The dairy industry is the single largest agricultural sub-sector, larger even than tea; it contributes some 14% of agricultural GDP and 3.5% of total GDP. And Kenyans love milk; they consume more of it than almost anyone else in the developing world. In terms of milk consumption per unit of average income, Kenya ranks only behind Mauritania and… ( Read on! )