BUILDING A STRONG BUSINESS - mabati.com · BUILDING A STRONG BUSINESS A look at Africa’s leadership crisis PAGE 50. At Beta Healthcare, we are fully committed to making a positive

December 2017- January 2018

Andrew Heycott, CEO Mabati Rolling Mills, talks about the 56-year-old roofing company, leadership attributes and the future of the company

BUILDING A STRONG BUSINESS

A look at Africa’s leadership crisisPAGE 50

At Beta Healthcare, we are fullycommitted to making a positiveimpact on the society and the environment.

Our business model promotes the interest of business alongside development of sustainable solutions to benefit the planet, its people and the economy.

COYA’s Corporate Citizenship & Environmental Award Winner: 2016 & 2017

Tel 20 265 2042/89, 0735 99 2699/2599, 0724 25 7072/73www.betacare.co.ke

December 2017 - January 2018

Management Magazine1

CONTENTSDecember 2017 - January 2018

News aNalysis

sMaRT leadeRshipReverse mentoring- Understanding the real benefits of learning from millennials page 32

What African agriculture can learn from Brazil page 46

CouNTRy RepoRT

adveRTisiNg FeaTuRes

iNspiRaTioN

36

The way forward for Kenya post 2017 poll - page 10

38

A look at the companies that emerged tops in the COYA/SMOYA 2017. They include Gogni-Rajope Construction Company Ltd, Betahealthcare,Twiga Chemicals and ICEA Lion page 22 - 31

How a job rotation helped Duncan Juma realise that his back office customer care job was a mismatch with his passions. page 28

34



CONTENTSDecember 2017 - January 2018

MoNey MaTTeRs

TaCTiCs5 Tips for scaling your influence as a millennial entrepreneur: How to turn your name into a legacy in your industry page 56

Is your child playing enough? Dr Justine odionyi explains why play has a crucial role in brain development among children. page 58

healThy liviNg

sMaRT soluTioNs

54

Plan for your money wisely to achieve short, medium and long term goals page 48

60 Your digital footprint could kill your career page 52

62

Stone CrusherPlant

RoadConstruction

Equipmenthire

P O. Box 353 – 40100 Kisumu , KENYAT: +254-708-740-729E: [email protected]

P. O. Box 8978 – 00300Nairobi, KENYA

T:+254-734-609-595E: [email protected]

BUILDING FOR GOOD

KISUMU NAIROBI

www.gogni-rajope.com



Stone CrusherPlant

RoadConstruction

Equipmenthire

P O. Box 353 – 40100 Kisumu , KENYAT: +254-708-740-729E: [email protected]

P. O. Box 8978 – 00300Nairobi, KENYA

T:+254-734-609-595E: [email protected]

BUILDING FOR GOOD

KISUMU NAIROBI

w w w.g ogni-rajope.com



What is your rela-tion-ship with mon-ey?

What goes on in your mind when your bank account has money or when it is empty? Does having money make you happy or anxious?

According to Dr. Brad Klontz a financial psychologist, just about everyone has a complicated relationship with money.

Dr. Klontz adds that financial strain has been found to reduce relationship satisfaction, worsen depression, and lead to emotional problems, health difficulties and poor work performance.

In the book Mind Over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health, Drs. Brand and Ted Klontz say money disorders are persistent patterns of self-destructive and self-limiting financial behaviours. They result from distorted beliefs about money we develop from our financial flashpoint experiences. These are painful, distressing, and/or dramatic life events associated with money that are so emotionally powerful, they leave an imprint that lasts into adulthood.

Below are three categories of money disorders identified in their book:

FIRST THOUGHTS

HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS:

Miriam M. Chege ([email protected])

EDITOR:

Tabitha Areba ([email protected])

SUB EDITORS:

Murugi Ndwiga ([email protected])

Brenda Muse [[email protected]]

STAFF WRITER AND PHOTOGRAPHER:

Sammi Nderitu ([email protected])

DESIGN & PRODUCTION:

Vincent Mwai ([email protected])

CONTRIBUTORS:

Vincent Kimosop, Robert Waruiru, Grace Maingi, Duncan

Juma, Mercy Kamana, Nidhi Sina, Robert Kanyua, Mercy

Muendo, Mojisola Ojebode, Alfred Mathu, Benson

Mugambi, Loyd Kibaara, Justine Odionyi, Boaz Kisero

COVER PHOTO: Allan Gichigi

PHOTOS: Sammi Nderitu & Shutterstock photos

HEAD OF SALES:

Anthony Githendu ([email protected])

ADVERTISING SALES (KENYA):

Elizabeth Mbinya, Boaz Kisero, Charles Chege.

ADVERTISING & SUBSCRIPTION (UGANDA)

Boaz Amutuheire ([email protected])

ADVERTISING & SUBSCRIPTION (RWANDA)

Patrick Ojil ([email protected])

CIRCULATION ENQUIRIES

[email protected]

PRINTED BY: SMART PRINTERS LTD.

PUBLISHER

THE KENYA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT,

Luther Plaza, 2nd and 3rd Floor,

Nyerere Road/University Way Roundabout

P.O. Box 43706 - 00100 Nairobi, Kenya.

Tel: 020 2535277

December 2017- January 2018

Andrew Heycott, CEO Mabati Rolling Mills, talks about the 56-year-old roofing company, leadership attributes and the future of the company

BUILDING A STRONG BUSINESS

A look at Africa’s leadership crisisPAGE 50

What you need to know about money disorders

1. Money Avoidance Disorders. This includes underspending, excessive risk aversion and financial denial, “when, rather than face financial reality, we try to minimise money problems by refusing to think about them all together (e.g. avoiding looking at a bank statement or paying a credit card bill).” Those with financial rejection experience guilt whenever money is accrued.

2. Money-Worshipping Disorders. These include pathological gambling, workaholism and overspending or compulsive buying.

3. Relational Money Disorders. These include financial dependence, financial incest and financial infidelity, like “telling “little green lies” about one’s spending or finances to one’s partner, making purchases outside an agreed-upon budget or lying about the cost of a big-ticket item.

The psychologists say that when we identify our financial flashpoint experiences, challenge our distorted money beliefs, and practice healthy financial behaviours (e.g. maintaining reasonable and low debt, having an active savings plan, as well as following a spending plan), we don’t just become materially richer-we become emotionally wealthier as well.”

Sammi Nderitu is a writer, photographer and digital media

expert at KIM. Email: [email protected]

By SAMMI NDERITU



Itrade Company Ltd. Pazuri Place, Kasarani Area. | P.O Box 1646 00100 | Tel. 0720299572/ 0706987530 Email: [email protected] | www.itrade.co.ke

We are a real estate company formed 11 years ago.

We offer cost – effective customer centric and innovative real estate solutions to our clients.

Our lines of business include:• sale of vacant and serviced plots• development and sale of houses• contractor business• ahighendspecializedfinisheshardware

To our staff, clients, business partners and stakeholders, we say thank you for making us become the Overall SME of the Year, besides scooping Leadership & Management and Innovation, ICT & Knowledge Management Awards during the 2017 COYA/SMOYA Awards.

Keen on investing in real estate? Call or pay us a visit today.



Perspective

By MURIITHI NDEGWA

Whatever form the crisis may take, business leaders

should develop a swift response approach.”

Staff training yields productivity

While it’s easy to view in-vest-ment

in employee development as a cost centre, statistics show that the benefits a company can accrue from a skilled manager are wide-reaching when considered wisely. There is indeed evidence that organisations investing in effective staff training and development tend to achieve both short and long term benefits.

Productivity and customer satisfactionTraining increases overall customer satisfaction because of professional service delivery by the staff, which can only be achieved through targeted customer service training.

Employee retentionRetention of productive employees is a major concern for HR professionals and business executives. HR data analytics show that it is more efficient to retain a quality employee than to recruit, train and orient a replacement employee of the same quality. Employee training is one of the few exercises most companies/businesses conduct to improve employee and business performance. Training employees empowers them to perform diligently even in tasks they doubted they could when joining the company. A good case study is Quicken Loans Inc., Michigan. The online mortgage lender’s offers its full-time employees an average of 350 hours of training every year and has a low 13 per cent full-time staff turnover rate.

Bottom lineTraining has always been a great option for organisations to build a diversified employee base, with team members learning the ropes and company mores. But many organisations throw the training programme to the curb after they feel new employees have become well-acclimated. But this notion could not be further from the truth. Companies need to develop a consistent training programmr to allow employee growth.

Muriithi Ndegwa OGW, HSC, MKIM - KIM Executive

Director /CEOEmail: [email protected]: @MuriithiNdegwa

Zappos - an online shoe and clothing shop based in Las Vegas, Nevada - is recognised as a legend in the customer service world. The company has an employee culture with a singularity of mind focused on customer service. Everyone that is hired - accountant, lawyer, software developer - goes through the same training as the call center reps. It is a four-week training programme and then they are actually on the phone for two weeks taking calls from customers. At the end of that first week of training, Zappos makes an offer to the entire class of payment for the time already spent training plus a bonus of USD2,000 to quit and leave the company immediately after the training. According to Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, paying new hires to leave may seem counter-intuitive, but it makes simple sense; the goal of is to weed out the people who are just there for a pay cheque.

Increased productivity There is an interesting empirical study by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) on 540 corporations that used two samples whereby one invested about USD900 for each employee per annum while the other invested approximately USD275. The results revealed that the group with high investment outperformed the other with 57 per cent more sales and 37 per cent higher gross profit. Besides that, the study noted that increasing training expenditure by USD680 improved shareholders value by an average of about six per cent.





“Simply the most accurate and comprehensive

reports on emerging markets available.”

– The World Bank

Oxford Business Group is a global economic research house and consultancy producing annual investment and economic reports in more than 35 markets.

THE INSIDE EDGEwww.oxfordbusinessgroup.com

[email protected]

@OBGinsights

News Africa

Money trans-fer service pro-vider West-ern

Union has reported a decrease in transactions in Africa as com-petition for diaspora remittances increased following increased com-petition from new players.Western Union’s third quarter financials show an 11 per cent decline in the number of transactions conducted in its Middle East, African and South Asian markets.Equity Bank has said the volume of cash remitted through its

partnership with Western Union has dropped by 31.5 per cent in the past two years to KSh3.9 billion ($390 million) from KSh5.7 billion ($570 million). New entrant Wave has been the key beneficiary in the competition for diaspora remittances. Wave was used to pay 29 per cent, (Ksh4.3 billion) of the total amount remitted through Equity Bank in its first year of operation. The platform does not charge transfer fees to send money from the US, UK and Canada to Ghana and East Africa. Paypal, a favourite with youths doing in online jobs, has also become a key player taking up some of the business in Equity Bank.

Kenya and South Africa have been tipped as the next continental hotspots in luxury hotel investment, according to a new report released at the World Travel Market 2017 held in November.“South Africa and Kenya are expected to register strong growth in luxury hotels as Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be popular with luxury travellers,” says Euromonitor International’s Top 100 Cities Destination Ranking 2017 report.Kenya has witnessed a string of heavy investments by leading luxury hotels in Kenya last year, among them Accor Hotels, Hilton, Carlson Rezidor and Acacia Premier. Nineteen hotels are expected to come to Kenya shortly, with a total of 3,453 new rooms in the pipeline, according to a report by Lagos-based consultancy W-Hospitality Group.A hotel must offer luxurious accommodation and public areas including a spacious reception hall, 24-hour reception and room service to be termed as luxurious. Five-star hotels must have a restaurant with a high-quality menu and at least one permanent luxury suite.

Western Union reports drop in Africa business

Kenya, SA named luxury hotels hotspots



“Simply the most accurate and comprehensive

reports on emerging markets available.”

– The World Bank

Oxford Business Group is a global economic research house and consultancy producing annual investment and economic reports in more than 35 markets.

THE INSIDE EDGEwww.oxfordbusinessgroup.com

[email protected]

@OBGinsights



News Analysis

In 2017, Kenya has gone through the phases of its most protracted electioneer-ing period since Indepen-dence. The intrigues wit-nessed during this election include an unprecedented scale of mass protests against

the elections management body, nu-merous electoral-related litigations, the first annulment of a presidential poll, the withdrawal of a major candidate and the resignation of a top election management body officer culminating in a controversial repeat election characterised by a significant voter boycott, cancelation of elections in 25 constituencies, the lowest voter turnout and the highest victory thresholds for the eventual winner.

The net effect of this one-of-a-kind electioneering period has been an intensification of the economic woes facing the country mainly arising from a fall in domestic and external market demand. This is mainly attributed to a deferred focus on the economy and prolonged political activities resulting in uncertainty. During such times, investors tend to adopt ‘a wait and see’ approach even as they look forward to a predictable conclusion of the contest.

The opposition NASA coalition has now mutated into a resistance movement and has devised different strategies to prosecute their agenda

among them being economic boycott targeting products of major companies.

A look at Kenya’s growth prospects reveals a worrying trend in the medium term GDP growth rates for Kenya. For eight consecutive months, Kenya’s GDP growth forecast has been reducing and this is traced back to April 2017 when the World Bank downgraded the projected 6.0 per cent GDP growth rate by 0.5 per cent. As at September 2017, the rate stood at 4.8 per cent.

The World Bank estimates Kenya’s economy to be USD70 billion and a one percentage drop in growth implies real impact on the lives of the populace. Things have not been made any easy particularly that this is happening in the wake of the passage of the interest capping legislation that has led to limited access to credit by SMEs.

It is vital to appreciate that ours is

The way forward for Kenya post 2017 pollsKenya’s is neither a legal nor a constitutional problem, but a political problem that will require a political approach to solve.

BY VINCENT KIMOSOP

neither a legal nor a constitutional problem; it is purely a political one that will require a political approach. This is why even with the repeat election and the apex court having pronounced itself on the same (it helped give the elections a legal and constitutional closure) the nation is not yet out of the woods. It will take political capital to get the country out of the current situation.

Proper diagnosis of the issue is important so as to ensure that we have the proper prescription to the problem and use this opportunity to address the matter comprehensively unlike the short-term approaches that have been used in the past.

This is why calls for dialogue are fast gaining currency with a greater emphasis being on a broad-based, all-inclusive multi sectoral approach. This is because of the lessons of the 2007/2008 post election violence that was ended with the formation of a grand coalition government.



News Analysis

Interestingly, even after a political deal - the famous Kibaki-Raila Handshake - the agenda four items were not given the due attention. these included: Undertaking constitutional, legal and institutional reforms; Tackling poverty and inequality and combating regional development imbalances; Tackling unemployment especially among the youth; and Consolidating national cohesion and unity .

To a better futureAs Kenya navigates this necessary democratic imperative of holding elections every five years, there is need for a moment of introspection on its negative effect on the socio-economic fabric of our society. Focus should therefore not only be on the prospects of building cohesion, peace and stability but it should also give emphasis on how to cushion the economy from the disruptive effects of elections in Kenya.

A key starting point should be in enhancing systems and processes of elections management to ensure that the conduct of future presidential contests meets the minimum thresholds of legitimacy and legality. In order to satisfactorily realise this, legislative reform efforts should be conducted in a bipartisan manner and within a time that does not coincide with electioneering periods in order to eliminate conflict of interest and elevate objectivity in the design of the legal and regulatory frameworks governing elections.

Experience from the performance of the Cabinet indicates that communities in Kenya want to be represented in Government mainly by politicians and not professionals. To foster this aspiration, there might be need to address the 2010 Constitution structure of the Executive. We currently have a spoilt system (“winner takes all” presidential system and “loser loses everything”) and thus competition

to clinch the presidency is intense.The Bomas Draft is a good reference point on the options that Kenyans made during the development of the Constitution.

There’s need to redefine the structure of the role of the Opposition. The current framework where we have a Leader of Minority has not been effective in facilitating the Opposition to engage in the policy processes. We need to make provision for a dignified national Opposition with facilitation and funding to be able to play its role of checking government in Parliament and outside and promoting national integration and development and this can be replicated even at the county level.

Vincent Kimosop is a Policy and Governance Expert with Sovereign

Insights.Email: vkimosop@

sovereigninsight.com



Top Events

Nairobi Bottlers Ltd was named 1st Runners Up, 2017 Company of the Year.

The team from I Trade Company Ltd, which won Overall SME of the Year,, receives their trophy. They also took home the Leadership and Management category under SMOYA and the Innovation, ICT & Knowledge Management award.

Kenyatta National Hospital took home the Judges Award.

The OPI Business Excellence Model exists to help organisations improve their performance and succeed in the competitive global marketplace. The Kenya Institute of Management is dedicated to improving African orga-nizations regardless of sector, size or structure. The OPI was developed in response to feedback from organiza-tion participating in Company of the Year Award (COYA) and SME of the Year Award (SMOYA), who called on the Kenya Institute of Management (KIM) to refine the assessment meth-odology in order to emphasize the relationship between instilling smart business processes and generating strong business results.Whilst there are numerous man-agement tools and techniques commonly used, the OPI Excellence Model is a practical, non-prescriptive framework which provides a holistic view of the organisation and it can be used to determine how these different methods fit together and complement each other. The Model can therefore be used in conjunction with any number of these tools, based on the needs and function of the organisation, as an overarching framework for developing sustain-able excellence.

COYA/SMOYA GALA NIGHT

Venue: Safari Park Hotel

Date: 17th Nov 2017Photos: Courtesy



Top Events

Blowplast Ltd took home the Innovation, ICT & Knowledge Management under COYA.

Gogni Rajope Construction Com-pany Ltd was recognised under SMOYA for Corporate Citizenship and Environmental Focus and Productivity & Quality.

Shoppers Sacco was awarded for Human Resource Focus under SMOYA as well as Customer Orientation & Marketing.



Great Quotes

1. When angry, separate yourself from the situation and take time to cool out.

2. Attack the problem, not the person. Start with a compliment.

3. Communicate your feelings assertively, NOT aggressively. Express them without blaming. Focus on the issue,

NOT your position about the issue.

4. Accept and respect that individual opinions may differ, don’t try to force compliance, work to develop common agreement.

5. Do not review the situation as a competition, where one has to win and one has to lose. Work toward a solution where both parties

can have some of their needs met.

6. Focus on areas of common interest and agreement, instead of areas of disagreement and opposition.

7. NEVER jump to conclusions or make assumptions about what another is feeling or thinking.

8. Listen without interrupting; ask for feedback if needed to assure a clear understanding of the issue.

9. Remember, when only one person’s needs are satisfied in a conflict, it is not resolved and will continue.

10. Forget the past and stay in the present. Build ‘power with’ NOT ‘power over’ others. Thank the person for listening.

Ten Strategies for Conflict Resolution





Cover Story

Andrew Heycott, Chief Executive Officer, Mabati Rolling Mills



Cover Story

Mabati Rolling Mills (MRM) has been in business since 1961, ensuring they are at the forefront of growth through innovation, technology and sustainability. ANDREW HEYCOTT, Chief Executive Officer, talks to SAMMI NDERITU about their success journey.

1. How has the recent elec-tioneering period in Kenya affected your business? Have you had to re-organise

your operations to cushion yourself from the current economic slow-down?

Like most manufacturers in Kenya, we have experienced a challenging environment during 2017 both due to the electioneering but also other macro econominc factors. We anticipated some of these challenges during our planning processes and have had to manage the business accordingly. We are extremely fortunate that our partners and Kenyan consumers have remained positive about the future and in fact we have launched new products this year, opened new service centres and ramped up our new colour coating line at Mariakani.

2. What informed the deci-sion in 2015 to embark on the USD25 million (Sh2.5 billion) colour-coating com-

plex at Mariakani and where has the project reached so far?

As the Kenyan and East African building and construction markets develop and mature we have continued to see the consumer demanding greater product diversity and quality. This is especially true of colour steel roofing solutions and hence the

Building a STRONG business, brick by brick

decision to expand our colour coating capacity. This was to provide both greater diversity in product solutions and also to encompass the latest technology with a state of the art colour coating line from Korea, who are recognised world leaders in the field. With our new facility we will continue to lead the way through new products and solutions for many years to come. We oficially commissioned the line in December 2016 and it is currently being ramped up to capacity.

3. What are the major chal-lenges that MRM is facing and how are you dealing with them?

If you look globally, the rate of change is unprecedented. Be it markets, technology, urbanisation, regulatory environments, product solutions or competition. Coupled with this the consumer, through digitisation, is now demanding an experience as opposed to simply a product purchase. It is critical that big businesses stay nimble, fast paced, flexible and capable of adapting quickly.

Of course, business would not be exciting without challenges and our industry is no exception locally. For MRM, it is paramount that we operate on a ‘level playing field’ across the region when it comes to competing products. This means relevant authorities need to ensure imported products comply with

Kenyan standards and on this front we work closely with the authorities to achieve this. Ultimately this is beneficial to the consumer who ends up with a longer life roof.

We are commited to keep our products at world class standards even when we see an increased proliferation of substandard material in the market.

The other key challenge is ensuring we can manufacture in a cost competitive environment and we encourage the government to continue its drive to improve power availability and lower costs as well as continuing to drive infrastructure development to improve and reduce logistics costs.

4. You have over 25 years in senior leadership roles across Asia and Africa. Where did you start in your

career journey and how did your previous jobs prepare you for this role as CEO?

I’ve been in the steel industry all of my career, with Kenya now being the ninth country. I started out in Australia where the industry is quite technologically advanced and I must say the standards in Kenya (and especially at MRM) are comparable to the best in the world. Since then, I worked across Asia for 20 years in senior roles prior to moving to Kenya with my family almost five years ago. The biggest challenge for large and complex businesses



Cover Story

these days is to stay nimble, flexible and consistently improve value propositions to meet future market expectations. I believe having a broad breadth of experience across many countries and cultures gives one a bettter understanding of this need and the development needs of our people.

5. When you were appointed into this position, what was your first order of business?

What were the quick wins you need-ed to realise within a short time?

I firmly believe the best time to transform a company is before it gets into trouble. Joining a market leading company like MRM gave me the opportunity to take a great business and make it better. My first order of business was understanding the leadership capability within the organisation and having the right leaders, with the right skills in the right positions. Once you have the right team with an absolute focus on the customer then a business becomes unstoppable. In terms of quick wins, I spent a lot of time focusing on improving our customer experience through better quality, a broader product basket, a wider geographic presence and a better service experience. Having people operate in a safe way and safe environment is also key and a lot of work was done to help people realise they need to go home every day in the same shape they came to work.

A lot of focus has also been placed on improving our cost base, technology, internal operating efficiencies and ultimately making the business more ‘bullet proof’ and therefore sustainable in the long term.

6. How would you describe your leadership and man-agement style? How do you



Cover Story

encourage creative thinking within your organisation?

I think my team would say I am tough but fair. I hold myself accountable every day for the successes and failures and try and ensure through a robust vision that my lead team and in fact the entire workforce are empowered to deliver that vision. We operate in a relatively strong collaborative leadership environment internally and I like to see people continually challenged to reach their own potential but also to stretch themselves for their own development.

If you consider that successful businesses will need to reinvent themselves every 3-5 years, then innovation and creativity are key traits to develop in the organisation.

7. What characteristics do you believe every leader should possess?

The famous actress Lupita Nyong’o said that “all dreams are valid” to which I agree, but a vision without a plan and the right people to execute it is simply a dream. Have ‘the dream’, have the right people empowered and plans in place to deliver the dream and most importantly communicate. Leaders these days need to be tenacious, passionate, 1000 per cent focused, thick skinned and most importantly flexible with an intuitive sense to understand risk and reward.

8. What behaviours or traits do you see derailing professionals in their careers?

Knowing is the easy part but doing is the hard part. Many young leaders are full of passion, good ideas and confidence but if they don’t have the tenacity and communication skills to drive their

course is that people assume you will always know the answer but we are all human - no one can always know the answer.

12. Outside your CEO role, what are you passionate about?

I care about animal welfare, education, environment, health, human rights and poverty alleviation. Having worked across many countries where basic societal needs are not always met I feel compelled to try and improve the lives of the less fortunate in whatever small way I can. To this end, both personally and via the Safal Group – MRM, we are passionate about giving back to the communities in which we live and operate. We operate four CSR pillars around health, education, shelter and the environment across Kenya. In Mariakani we operate a fully integrated medical centre treating 40,000 patients per annum and a technical training institute educating more than 600 students each year. I am involved closely with both and am extremely proud of what they achieve in improving the lives of young Kenyans.

13. How do you want to be remembered when all is said and done?

We believe a business is built ‘brick by brick’. I hope that the bricks I lay will provide a strong and resilient MRM with a talented and dedicated leadership team to thrive for many years to come.


expert at KIM.

Email: [email protected]

vision and their teams they may become unstuck. I live by the mantra ‘never give up’ and young leaders need to realise that it takes hard work and resilience to be successful in the current complex business environment.

9. What advice would you give someone going into a lead-ership position for the first

time?Listen. Remain focused, remain

passionate, have a dream, be prepared to fail and of course never give up. Recogniye your own weaknesses so you can ensure you can have the right people around you to ‘bridge the gaps’.

10. What are you doing to ensure you continue growing and developing

as a leader?We live in an age where

information is at our finger tips so I spend a lot of time following, reading and learning from great global leaders. It is important that senior leaders have strong networks and forums to share, learn and bounce ideas. Feedback from my peers and young MRM leaders also keeps me on my toes.

11. Tell us a few things you like and dislike about your current

position.Seeing young leaders develop

into confident senior seadership roles always excites me. We have a fantastic talent pool here in Kenya and I really enjoy watching my management teams run the business and address the challenges each day. One of the challenges of senior leadership roles is making tough decisions and sometimes making those decisions can be emotionally draining. The other challenge of



The Big Idea

The difference between tax planning and tax avoid-ance is the thickness of a prison wall. That is a quote attribut-ed to Denis

Healey, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer speaking sometime when aggressive tax avoidance was still fashionable. Tax revenues are central to any government and it is easy to see why tax evasion has taken centre stage today. Sample this: the Rwanda Revenue Author-ity exceeded its 2016/17 revenue collection target while the Tanzania Revenue Authority marginally missed its target.

The Kenya Revenue Authority missed its target by an eye lash wide margin. Such sterling performances viewed against ever increasing tax revenue targets bring to the fore the debate on tax avoidance, a pet topic of the European Union (EU) as it turns up the heat on the “fight against tax

Thin line between tax avoidance and tax evasionThink about the principal purpose of your commercial transactions to avoid being in the taxman’s crosshairs

evasion and avoidance, which are the cause of a major shortfall in tax revenues.”

Tax evasion is criminal. You have an obligation to pay your fair share of tax from profits. There are enough examples of tax evasion but one which fascinates me to date is that of Italy where taxpayers who own limited edition Ferraris and Maseratis claim unemployment benefits.

Tax avoidanceTax avoidance on the other hand is legal. At least I used to think it was the legal reduction of one’s tax liability. A good example of this is taking out an insurance policy and claiming the insurance relief available under the Income Tax Act. But Section 2 of the Tax Procedures Act, 2015, which defines tax avoidance as “a transaction or a scheme designed to avoid liability to pay tax under any tax law” has challenged my earlier beliefs about tax avoidance.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is simple, right? Possibly. But that was before

the seemingly ever expanding grey area of “tax mitigation, tax neutral schemes and aggressive tax planning”. As early as 1985, India had experienced tax planning. In the McDowell and Co Ltd case, the Indian High Court frowned upon aggressive tax planning saying “tax planning should not degenerate into tax avoidance through subterfuges”.

The EU appears to have a shared view, often characterising tax avoidance as pushing the boundaries of aggressive tax planning, which explains the EU support for the latest base erosion and profit shifting initiatives. Yet, despite all the hue and cry about tax planning, there is no doubt about a taxpayer’s right to tax plan.

The right to tax plan was asserted by the US Court of Appeal in Gregory vs Helvering (1928) in which the court held that “Anyone may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.”

BY ROBERT WARUIRU



The Big Idea

The Ramsay PrincipleSo how are countries responding to the challenge of tax planning? Two such responses are the enactment of General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR) and enforcement of the Principal Purpose Test (PPT).

Despite the words “tax avoidance” appearing eight times in the Kenyan Tax Procedures Act, it is not clear how the Commissioner will rule that a transaction is a tax avoidance scheme. Given this lacuna, the PPT, should in my view, be a critical consideration in any transaction as this will likely be the basis for a tax avoidance ruling by the Commissioner.

The PPT, was first used in the

Gregory vs Helvering case and looks at the real reason behind a particular action or transaction. If it can be proven that the transaction is legal but only serves to lower one’s tax liability, the court will disregard that action or transaction, however legal it may be. This is also commonly referred to as the Ramsay Principle, after the celebrated 1982 case of Ramsay vs Inland Revenue Commissioner in which the highest court in the UK ruled that where a transaction is so arranged as to serve no other purpose other than to reduce the tax liability, the arrangement should be disregarded.

One must always consider the substance of the transaction and this substance must tie back to commercial rationale. Without the

commercial rationale, the form of the transaction is likely to be disregarded.

Tax planning is a fluid and ever-evolving concept. While it is difficult to define what tax planning is, avoiding being in the taxman’s crosshairs is a business imperative; being in the focus of the taxman isn’t the cosiest of places to be.

Thinking about the principal purpose of your commercial transactions should be a good starting point to avoid being in the taxman’s sights.

Robert Waruiru is an Associate Tax Director at KPMG Advisory

Services Ltd. Email: [email protected]

The difference between tax planning and tax avoidance is the thickness of a prison wall.” Denis Healey



During the 2017 COYA/SMOYA annual awards, Gog-ni-Ra-jope Con-

struction Company Ltd won two awards - the Corporate Citizenship & Environmental Focus Award and the Productivity and Quality

OPI has helped us improve performance

BY MURUGI NDWIGA

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Gogni-Rajope Construction Company Ltd won two awards - the Corporate Citizenship & Environmental Focus Award and the Productivity and Quality Award – at the 2017 COYA/SMOYA annual awards and they attribute this to hardwork and sytems.

Award. The awards are not by any way a mean achievement - years of hard work and putting the right sys-tems in place have gone into putting the company at this position, asserts Eng. Hannington Juma, the chief executive officer.

Gogni Rajope Construction Company was incorporated in 1993 but Eng. Juma and Eng. George Guya, also a director at the company, joined forces in 2004 to steer the company forward.

The transformation enacted since

has seen the company take up road construction projects across the country and beyond the borders; the company has ongoing projects in the Republic of South Sudan and has successfully executed projects funded by the World Food Programme, Unicef and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

The company’s commendable output has put it in good standing with the Kenyan Ministry for Transport, Infrastructure and



We started looking around on how we could improve on our management structures and that’s how we learnt of the OPI programme. We decided it could be the right tool to help us assess ourselves and improve on our management,” Hannington Juma.

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Housing through the various road agencies, which has helped it to grow and leave a mark in the construction industry.

Better systems, better outputBoth Juma and Guya are civil engineers. They say when they joined the company in 2004, the management lacked proper structures.

“We had to recruit qualified personnel, get the right equipment and come up with motivational programmes for the personnel and chart out clear vision for the company,” says Juma.

communities where their projects run. To ensure the quality of their work, Juma says the development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for management of their projects and regular audits has improved productivity.

what the future holds“The award is just to show us

that we are improving but we want to continue by putting systems into place which will help us into profitability and production,” Juma says.

He reveals that they have gone a step further and had the company register for ISO 9001, 2015 which he believes will catapult the firm to the next stage. There are still gaps in their systems that need more attention, like that of financial management system, and to this effect, implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is in the pipeline.

“We would want to gauge ourselves in terms of turnover,” says Juma of the company’s future in the next two years. The company’s turnover had reached Ksh 800 million in 2012, but due to the challenges in 2013/2014, it dropped to KSh 300 million. Currently, turnover is approximately KSh 500 million. “In two years, we would want to have gone to KSh 1 billion per year.”

Juma confirms that the OPI process has benefited Gogni Rajope and would readily recommend the process to other local companies - especially to small and medium sized companies. “The OPI process is quite vigorous and very useful.”

Murugi Ndwiga is the Sub Editor

Management Magazine.

Email:[email protected]

They engaged a recruiting firm to hire professionals who would manage the various functions within the company. The input of the professionals would be fundamental in taking the company to the next level.

Their interest in embracing the Organisational Performance Index (OPI) process in 2016 would also leave a mark in their internal processes and improve their output. In 2013/2014, they had experienced delay from the government in payment of certified works, which led them to suspending some of their projects. This made them look deeper into their internal systems to work a way out.

“We started looking around on how we could improve on our management structures and that’s how we learnt of the OPI programme. We decided it could be the right tool to help us assess ourselves and improve on our management,” says Juma.

“Based on the exposure we have gotten from this exercise, our production has improved a lot. Despite the challenges of delayed payment, we are still able to deliver projects within a good framework,” says Juma. “We also take pride in that whereas most of the local contractors had to re-assign their projects, we did not.” Handing over of projects to a competitor is based on poor or non-performance mainly caused by the funding structure.

The OPI process has seven determinants and in all, Juma believes the company has improved tremendously. A significant improvement is on their Corporate Citizenship programmes, like the education programme where they support bright needy students in areas where they carry out projects.

They have also dug boreholes for



What makes an organ-isation great? Smart strat-

egy? Inspirational leadership? The people who work there? Great customer service?Appropriate sys-tems?Anantharaman Ramamurthy is the managing director of Twiga Chemical Industries, which was

What it takes to be the bestTwiga Chemical Industries emerged 2017 winner Company of the Year Awards as well as taking home other trophies in Leadership & Management and Productivity & Quality. Anantharaman Ramamurthy, the managing director, talks about what it takes to be a great company.

named Company of the Year 2017 in the recent COYA/SMOYA Awards by the Kenya Institute of Manage-ment. He says his organisation is a product of clear thinking from top to bottom, putting the customer in the middle, collaboration, trust and positivity.

“We have very clear thinking. And the thinking will be the same whether you talk to me or you talk to somebody else. We are very sure about what the role of each person is,” says Ramamurthy.

BY KAGENI MUSE

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“We have five values which are everywhere, even in our calendar. We put the customer in the middle. Around it we build people with tremendous professional abilities, whether one is serving the customer or doing something in finance or the technical department,” he says of the values that have helped this company stay in existence for the last 68 years.

The company, involved in the distribution of crop protection, animal health, consumer products and explosives won the Leadership and Management and Productivity and



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Quality awards. Ramamurthy took home the first runner’s-up CEO’s trophy while his Crop Protection and Animal Health General Manager, James Mwangi, won first runner’s-up award Manager of the Year.

Building a worthwhile brandRamamurthy says the company

works very hard to remain consistent and reliable and in that way build trust with customers.

“Brands are nothing but a repository of trust. If you buy a product that we have had for 25 years, what you bought then is what you buy now- it works the same.”

“We are not comfortable with people whom we can’t trust. We

and so much pride and joy. Positivity and being solution-

oriented is also a key pillar that has contributed to the success of this organisation.

“It’s very easy for all of us to lapse into negativity when we have some setbacks; we all have set backs, individually and as a company. We remind ourselves all the time through trainings to remain positive. We spend a lot of time, energy, money and effort on this. When we encounter problems, we say don’t worry, let’s sit together and see what is a good solution. Don’t get bogged down with the problem,” he says.

Ramamurthy says they took part in the OPI Excellence process as an internal motivation to prove to themselves that they have what it takes. “In the process the world has seen it,” he says laughing.

Technology for better outputThe future of the agrochemicals

industry as a whole is undergoing change with multinationals like Bayer merging with seed company Monsanto and a general move towards biologically friendly chemicals. Twiga Chemicals, Ramamurthy says, is aware of this reality and is working towards distributing seeds and bio-friendly chemicals to remain a viable company into the future.

He however says that the government needs to come up with policies that recognise the fact that the future of agriculture, farming and feeding is in technology, not in traditional ways.

“We have to wake up to that reality.”

Kageni Muse is the Sub Editor Management Magazine.


It’s very easy for all of us to lapse into negativity when we have some setbacks; we all have setbacks, individually and as a company. We remind ourselves all the time through trainings to remain positive.”

build trust with our customers, with other stakeholders like the regulators and with our employees and we expect them to do the same thing. We like them to be consistent too. You cannot be saying one thing one day then after three days you are saying something else,” he says.

His other tool of trade is collaboration and consultation among staff and the leadership.

“We have structures in place that ensure people work together. They have to sit, talk, discuss, agree and then give responses to problems. We have a very collaborative form of leadership; it takes time. I don’t make decisions on my own. We will talk to each other and make sure all our senior management are in agreement. If top management is in sync, then there is no way anything can fail,” he says.

Ramamurthy adds he is not afraid of spending two weeks or even a month convincing everybody that something is good and getting buy-in, but after this, the results are durable.

As part of the OPI Excellence process that led to their win, Ramamurthy says Twiga Chemicals has made a lot of improvement in leadership and strategic management. They have set up three levels of management that includes a committee of directors, an executive committee and a management council.

“We realised that we can learn a lot from this. We have changed the way we organise ourselves. We have a clear strategic plan, which is documented and enunciated and shared. Earlier it might have been on the minds of people but not on a piece of paper,” he says.

The firm has also improved its HR processes, IT and marketing, resulting in a lot of enthusiasm among the staff



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JOSEPH WARUINGI, Managing Director Advantech Consulting, talks about management consulting, the growth of the firm and the services they offer.

BY KAGENI MUSE

Manage-ment consul-tants are becoming a key part of today’s busi-

ness culture and not without good reason. Do you need a particular set of skills that are not available in-house without incurring the cost of hiring a full time employee? Hire a consultant. Need a fresh pair of

Bringing new thinking to clients

eyes for an objective opinion on how you are running your business? Get a consultant. Need to make tough decisions without antagonising half your staff? Having too many projects spread across the globe and need someone with the expertise to manage them for you for the du-ration they are running? Then you might consider hiring a consultant.

Joseph Waruingi has been in the business for more than 20 years, first as an Associate Director at PwC in charge of Strategic ICT Consulting

and later with Advantech, a firm he started in 2003 after he saw the need for personalised management consulting services. He says a consulting firm is able to provide clients with services where they lack the skills in-house to address a business challenge or where the client is pressed for time but needs results fast.

“For all the organisations we offer Strategic ICT Consulting, we start with business process mapping and optimisation. This assists us and



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client to identify business processes that are redundant, duplicated and those that require to be changed. This is a consultative process to ensure buy in by client staff. Business optimisation ensures inefficient and redundant business processes are not automated and hence businesses can manage costs. We add value to our clients by bringing new thinking in their sectors,” Joseph says.

Having worked with many different companies across Africa and in many sectors, and with its expansive network of experts across the continent, Advantech is able to provide a fresh perspective and quick solutions.

Investing in opportunitiesJoseph says Advantech’s success

has proven that there is a space for mid-sized niche consultancies in management consulting in Kenya

Business optimisation ensures inefficient and redundant business processes are not automated and hence businesses can manage costs.”

despite the presence of the Big Four for a long time. The firm was successful within its first year to offer services to blue chip companies in Kenya, government agencies and the governments of Ethiopia, Zambia Ghana and Eritrea.

“We stay on top of our game by ensuring we offer cutting edge, relevant and practical advice to our clients and maintaining constant touch with them to anticipate their future needs and advise them. Having skilled staff is paramount and we put a lot of effort in up skilling our staff.”

Advantech started by offering management consulting services and as their list of clients grew, they begun offering additional services like Monitoring and Evaluation for development partner projects across the social sectors of health, education and agriculture. They are now operating in with an intent to grow this to 34 countries, especially in Francophone Africa, by 2020.

The firm also offers Supply Chain Management services in projects in the health sector for pharmaceuticals and management of cold chains.

“Advantech’s business model is to have our headquarters in Nairobi and grow our service portfolio in Africa through partnerships with local firms and individuals. Through international partnerships we are able to get business opportunities that are multi country and which require multi skilled consultants and we believe this model is sustainable for the foreseeable future,” Joseph says. “We are eyeing to build a pool of experts across Europe and Asia too.”

Facing the challengesA major challenge remains in the

long cycles for getting new business especially government tenders, which has affected cash flows as has politics and related conflicts in the continent.

Many have complained about the cost of hiring management consulting firms. How does Advantech price its services without outpricing itself with SMES that are too in need of their services? Joseph notes that SMEs are the bluechip companies of tomorrow and while they will encourage them to set aside an appropriate budget for the kind of value they will receive, Advantech is still keen on working with small firms so as to build relationships and put a foot in the door.

“Pricing for consultancies is dependent on what the client perceives as value. We constantly analyse competition and their pricing models to ensure we are competitive. We focus on small-scale corporates and entrepreneurs because we know they will become big in the future. We discount our service fee to them so as to invest in future business relationships.”

Advantech boasts of being a knowledge and learning organisation.

“Clients require demonstrable skills, knowledge and experience. We invest in the training of our staff. We sponsor our staff to international conferences and to work with our partner firms in Africa for learning. We believe this helps us keep our skills and experience up to date and helps with staff retention.”

Joseph says the firm is working on an employee share ownership plan to entice workers to stay as well as creating a positive learning environment.

“I lead from the front on all projects and coach our staff a lot. We have lunch hour meetings once a month where staff share experiences they have had and can learn from each other.”





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Beta Healthcare won the Corporate Citizenship and Environmental Award during the 2017 COYA/SMOYA gala night. BOAZ KISERO talks to Dr. Sanjay Advani, Director and Chief Executive Officer, about the achievement.

BY BOAZ KISERO

1. Beta Healthcare is respected for great product quality. Some of your brands like Action, Hedex and Mara Moja have achieved Super Brand status. What makes the company lead in pain management? At Beta Healthcare, we combine cutting edge technology, stringent quality control, state of the art infrastructure and innovative research to create quality yet affordable products. As a company, we focus on reducing

Promoting quality of life made us win

the production time using quality but affordable packaging material and intense research to improve existing products. Our strong distribution and sales network ensures that our products reach the farthest kiosk and consumer. Through this, we receive customer feedback which is used as a tool to assess our quality of service and products as a continuous improvement strategy.Besides pain management products,

our product portfolio comprises of over 100 products, which include products manufactured at Beta Healthcare’s facility and those from affiliate and partnering companies. 2. Give a brief about your journey to winning the Corporate Citizenship and Environmental award during the 2017 COYA/SMOYA gala night.

We are proud to say that Beta Healthcare has won this award twice in a row and look forward to



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retaining this title next year.Our journey started long before we began participation in the COYA awards. In 2008, when Aspen Group, a global pharmaceutical company from South Africa, acquired ownership of Beta Healthcare, one of the major changes that occurred was the focus on safety and environment. We have a vibrant Department of Environment, Safety and Health Department with several policies and strategies that ensure we do not cause adverse impact on the environment. Further, we proactively engage in projects that impact on reduction of our carbon footprint, waste generation and management, fuel, water and electricity consumption as well as setting up an effluent treatment plant for the treatment of processed waste water before discharge.These measures result in safeguarding the employees’ health

We have adopted corporate citizenship as an organisational practice with emphasis on philanthropic practice all round the year.

and safety; conservation of the environment while the company makes a financial saving too.

3. How has the OPI model affected your business processes, staff and clients?

The OPI model has helped us evaluate our processes and procedures vis a vis global standards, not only in Corporate Citizenship and Environmental areas but also in strategy execution, efficiency, staff satisfaction, customer satisfaction as well as resources utilisation.This model encourages continuous evaluation and improvement in all our operations. We believe that excellence is a journey, not a destination and so we keep improving each time in our quest to attain excellence.

4. Beta Healthcare was competing against some of the most respected brands in this region. What made you stand out in the Corporate Citizenship and Environmental Focus determinant?The answer lies on what the judges noted during the gala dinner. The citation read; “This company has a Corporate Citizenship Policy and Responsible Corporate Citizenship Philosophy. It has established departments such as Human Resources, Safety-Health and Environment, Quality, Governance and Legal Departments so as to realise the Corporate Citizenship and Environmental objectives. The company celebrates the recognition of the international days pertaining to Corporate Citizenship and Environmental matters.”

5. Does the company actively practice corporate conscience or

corporate citizenship as a business model? How do you ensure that you promote higher standards of living and quality of life for the communities that surround you while still maintaining profitability? Indeed, Beta Healthcare International is dedicated to social responsibility in the communities we live and work. We have adopted corporate citizenship as an organisational practice with emphasis on philanthropic practice all round the year. Some of the initiatives taken are aimed at conservation of wildlife and environment. This also applies to activities towards children/elderly homes and “Beyond Zero” campaigns. Other initiatives are done purely on humanitarian grounds to assist those in need.

6. Where would you want to see Beta Healthcare in the next five years?The business environment facing the pharmaceutical industry continues to evolve in Kenya and around the world. In the midst of these changing conditions, we are determined to contribute to the enrichment of the quality of life, through the creation of innovative pharmaceuticals and through the provision of pharmaceuticals that address diverse healthcare needs.Beta Healthcare is rapidly expanding in Africa. We want to expand our product basket to cater for the communities we serve while maintaining our quality and affordability; for our products to reach very market they are needed throughout Africa and beyond.

Boaz Kisero is a marketer and writer at KIM




Winning is about continuous improvement It takes persistence, team effort and embracing an attitude of learning in order to excel.

A few weeks have passed since Steven Oluoch, Chief Executive ICEA Lion Group, was awarded the ‘The CEO of

the Year’ trophy during the presti-gious Company of the Year Awards (COYA). However, the excitement on his face is still evident as he talks about it. Besides the CEO’s win, the company bagged ‘Customer Orien-tation’ and ‘Marketing and Financial Management’ awards.

The elated CEO reflectively looks back on the process leading to winning the awards and says that it has taken the company two years of continuous assessment and improvement. “Our journey started in 2015 when we enrolled to participate in OPI (Operational Performance Index). We identified our champions who were trained on the seven determinants then embarked on the process of self-assessment,” says Oluoch.

He adds that by going through the OPI process, the company was able to identify areas in the business that needed improvement in order to be ready for COYA. “The various champions held periodic

Steven Oluoch, Chief Executive ICEA Lion Group

sessions with their teams and short, medium and long term actions were determined. This went on until this

year when we felt ready to compete in COYA and as a result we won the three awards,” explains Oluoch.

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BY SAMMI NDERITU



As individual, we all have our own flaws but when we come together collectively, we draw from the strength of others and consequently excel,” Steven Oluoch.

Embrace teamwork Oluoch says that he did not expect to win the CEO of the Year award; “That was a huge and a welcome surprise to me.”

He looks back at the 10 years he has been CEO, first at Tanzania National Reinsurance Company (TAN-RE) then at Insurance Company of East Africa (ICEA) and finally at ICEA Lion General, and admits that the most important leadership lesson he has learnt is that a leader needs to be very flexible, highly adaptable and should accept the fact that he/she may not know everything hence the need to forge a collaborative

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working relationship with colleagues.

He adds; “You should surround yourself with good people, even those are who are better than you in certain respects. Someone once said; ‘If you want to go far, go alone but if you want to go furthest, go with other people.’ As individuals, we all have our own flaws but when we come together collectively, we draw from the strength of others and consequently excel,” says Oluoch.

Oluoch was TAN-RE’s first Operations Director when the company was set up in 2007, and was two years later promoted to CEO. He returned to Kenya in 2010 to join Insurance Company of East Africa (ICEA) in 2010 at a time when the organisation was undergoing a merger with the Lion of Kenya Company to form the ICEA Lion Insurance Group.

“I started my reinsurance career at Kenya Re in an environment that required not just having the requisite technical skills but also people and marketing skills and these grew me as a leader. Furthermore, at ICEA I got into a company that was doing both life and general insurance; areas that were relatively new to me given that my field of expertise was reinsurance. It is working closely with people in diverse fields that has contributed to the leader that I am today,” says Oluoch.

The CEO of the Year is quick to point out that leaders mostly fail because they do not imbue the people they are leading with passion to walk with them towards achieving their vision. “If your followers do not see you as a leader; as someone who cares about them, offers constructive criticism and develops them, then you will likely not be successful,” adds the father of

two who also attributes his success to immense support from his family.

World class standards As ICEA Lion basks in the glory of three awards, the company takes cognisance of the fact that it has achieved the recognition as a result of continuous improvement. Oluoch points out that OPI helped the company to identify various critical gaps, for example in the documentation of processes and frameworks that inform its daily activities.

“We have identified items that will need to find their way into departmental score cards to ensure continuity and sustainability. The best thing about OPI is that we are now benchmarking against world class standards as we move towards being the best not just locally, but globally,” says Oluoch.

As ICEA LION, a group with four distinct business units within it takes strides into the future, it is focused on being known as an insight-driven organisation that aims to stand out as the premier one-stop-shop financial services provider in the region. “We want to be famous for delighting our customers, being solution-centric and digitally innovative. In addition, we want to be an insight-driven organisation that delivers superior value from analytics to our customers and partners,” says Oluoch in conclusion.


expert at Kenya Institute of Management.




We use discomfort to forge new partnershipsDuncan Murashiki, General Manager Libya Oil Kenya Ltd, inspires leaders to be open, accountable and mentally tough.

What is Libya Oil currently doing in Kenya?

In the past year, we have expanded our network to 72 stations under the brand name OiLibya, and have a number lined up for rollout in the near term. We have a lubricant blending plant in Mombasa, terminals in Nairobi, Mombasa and Eldoret and a presence at the Kenya Pipeline Company depots in Western Kenya. We also operate an aviation business as we seek to shape African energy and empower African born prosperity.

What are your growth plans?We are continuing to focus

our attention on expanding our retail network here in Kenya - we see tremendous opportunities to spread our presence throughout the country, particularly looking at opportunities created by devolution.

What plans do you have to expand into new markets or new products?

We are looking to expand our presence in Uganda, where we have a subsidiary. We are looking to grow our network there from the current four stations to 13 by year end. We see tremendous opportunities for growth in both Kenya and Uganda and will be focused on expanding in this direction.

BY CHARLES CHEGE

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We continue to expand our activities in the aviation sector; we have recently signed a major supply agreement with one of the largest European airline companies and will be satisfying their product needs here in Nairobi.

We also have a partnership to supply one of the big Gulf carriers, which proves that Libya Oil Kenya Limited has the muscle and wherewithal to supply our customers with international quality products.

What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organisation?

Fundamentally, I believe in taking accountability for the performance of the business. I am accountable to my staff, business partners, banks, vendors, customers, or anyone who depends on the relationship with our company. How I impact these relationships is my starting point each and every day.

As an organisation gets larger there can be a tendency for the “institution” to dampen the “inspiration.” How do you keep this from happening?

Inspiring an organisation to achieve its greatest potential begins with an accountable leadership and communication right from the top and throughout the organisation. We regularly have forums where we update the team on overall performance, consistently keeping their eye on the ball, ensuring that each person knows what part they play in the overall success of the organisation. We also try to reinforce a winning mindset in the team. Most businesses suffer because they are not ready for discomfort. We use discomfort to forge new partnerships, because we realise we are not an island.

What is one characteristic that you believe every leader should possess?

It is said that no man/woman is an island, no man can do it all, no man knows all. Therefore, humility and accessibility are critical to success as a leader; if you are not accessible, approachable, humble or willing to interact with all and sundry, you will fail. Be open to all comers, to be humble and to be willing to work with others to solve problems and tackle opportunities.

What is the biggest challenge facing leaders today?

Identifying talent and retaining it. Even coming into an existing structure, it is most challenging to identify the most critical talent needed for an organisation to thrive. Skills and competencies have given way to talent in the modern organisation.

Who is the one person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader?

I cannot say that there is any one person that has had an outsized influence on my career as a leader, but that is not to mean I have not greatly benefited from the nurturing and tutelage of past leaders whom I have interacted with. I have always accepted that I don’t have all the answers to all the situations that a leader is exposed. As a result, I try and formulate a team around me to work as an advisory board. Sometimes this board is an online community of brains that I respect and value.

What are a few resources you would recommend to someone looking to become a better leader?

I believe that the best leadership practice is to be found on the battlefield. Nothing beats practice, nothing beats being in the ring, taking chances, failing, getting right back up, dusting yourself off and getting back into the ring and fighting on. And one can do vicariously through a mentor, or identifying someone to understudy, which is a vital way to appreciate what a leader does and how they handle the multiplicity of challenges and opportunities they face.

Any advice for someone going into a leadership position for the first time?

Jump in with a lot of mental and emotional toughness, but do not have any illusions about what lies ahead. Being a leader requires a lot of personal comfort with yourself so that you are not shy to learn and be coached. It is most critical to have moments to have a passion project or have an activity/hobby that enables you to unwind. Leadership can be stressful, and balance in one’s life is quite critical.

Charles Chege is a marketer with KIM. Email: [email protected]

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The Entrepreneur

ISIS NYONG’O, founder and CEO of Mums Village and a principal at strategic advisory firm Asphalt & Ink, speaks on her journey into entrepreneurship.

I’m excited to be in media and tech space in Africa right now



The Entrepreneur

BY KAGENI MUSE

Q. You’ve had an interesting career path in tech, often being in areas where you are breaking ground. You have even been named as Forbes Africa Top 20 Youngest Power Women and World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. How has the journey been? A. My professional journey has been truly incredible and I count myself quite fortunate to have found my passion for media and tech early on in life. I’m inspired by Africa’s potential and immense change that we’ve experienced here in Kenya and in other markets over my career. It’s not everywhere in the world where you can tangibly feel the impact of your work and that provides a source of strong motivation for result-oriented business leaders like myself.

Why leave flourishing formal employment to launch into entrepreneurship? I had inkling several years earlier that I wanted to build my own enterprises from scratch. I was never the type of employee who had the energy for a side hustle, but I had so many unexplored business ideas. The turning point came when I took deliberate time off to reflect on what I was uniquely positioned to do and concluded that if I didn’t push myself out of my corporate comfort zone at that time, I may not for another decade. That process led to me partnering with others to found strategic advisory firm Asphalt & Ink, a few years before MumsVillage, a digital media brand focused on women. The journey with both companies has been immensely fulfilling in different ways. As a principal with Asphalt & Ink, I serve clients who face unique challenges that have

the potential to shape our country and continent’s future and value the versatility of our firm’s strong strategic thinking and domain expertise to help them get there. MumsVillage has impacted the lives of thousands of women seeking content and online communities tailored to their needs. How has been your experience being an entrepreneur? The entrepreneurial experience has been quite multifaceted for me and I’ve learned an incredible amount about what it takes to build ventures from ideation phase. There’s a certain tenacity one needs to possess, as the initial years require significant energy and resources. Given the fast pace of change in our market and in media and tech specifically, there’s an abundance of enticing opportunities. It takes considerable discipline to efficiently evaluate opportunities and prioritise where you’ll focus your effort effectively. What have been your greatest lessons about running a successful venture?First, execution matters a lot more than the idea (with the caveat that you have to find ways to stay inspired) in the early years. Many founders say that it’s 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration and I couldn’t agree more. Second, to handle rejection magnanimously as founders hear ‘no’ a lot but sometimes that can mean ‘not now’, so keep relationships alive, as it can turn into ‘yes’ when you least expect it. Third, create dedicated time for reflection as the everyday operational needs will demand all your energy and leave you unable to process new information adequately to build

for the long term. Fourth, create support structures for emotional endurance and remind yourself the journey itself has to be worth it. Having worked with startups in Africa, where would you say the opportunities lie for those seeking to stand out? The past decade has been primarily about ‘fixing the basics’ needed for Africa’s technology and other industries to flourish. Now that we have a critical mass of users online, there is enormous opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors who can collectively leverage technology to address the key problems faced by historically underserviced markets. These markets will likely on average be richer, younger and healthier than our societies are today and their demands will be far greater than we can even begin to predict. What leadership tips have you found to work?Soliciting for and listening to the views of everyone I work with has served me well in building better businesses and in what teams consistently tell me they value in my leadership style. How do you empower the teams you work with?Young people have the chance to write a completely different chapter for Africa than the one they were handed. I give my teams a high level of responsibility and focused guidance to strengthen their skills. I hope this will empower them to have strong problem solving skills and the confidence to pursue their lives’ passions.





Top Woman

The dentist who is passionate about hair and skin Dr Gasheri Thuku is successfully juggling a career in dentistry where she heads the Dental Department at the Maragwa Sub-district Hospital and runs a business - manufacturing and selling natural skin care products.



Top Woman

One thing stands out about Dr. Gasheri Thuku – she is a rolling ball of energy and laughter. The most asked ques-

tion about her is, “How many hours do you have in your day?” Dr. Gasheri is a dentist at the Maragwa Sub-county Hospital where she also doubles as the Head of Dental De-partment. She is also the founder and CEO of Sheth Naturals, a natural oils and butters company that she started in 2014.

Recently, she was called upon to be a member of the Board of Management at her former school, Kenya High School. On top of that, she organises yearly medical camps in her county. Event organisation is also in her blood, having recently put together the first Boma High Tea that brought the Kenya High School alumni together.

Every three days, from 8am to 5pm, she is in Maragwa, relieving people from crippling toothaches and attending to emergencies. When she is not in Maragwa, she is managing Sheth, a company that she founded after a frustrating search for natural hair products.

Despite the abundant availability of indigenous trees and fruits from which natural oils and butters are made, the oils were ridiculously expensive. Dr. Gasheri therefore embarked on a mission to provide these products in the most affordable way- by having minimal margin between the production cost and retail cost. Sheth Naturals now serves every county in Kenya through their delivery system and stockists in different towns. They also serve Uganda, Tanzania and very recently South Africa. They also do a few export orders globally but the main base is East and South Africa.

Dr. Gasheri says the company ensures high quality in its products by first engaging professionals in research, formulations and production. She adds that they are also particular about where and from whom they

get their raw materials and they try to keep to the same suppliers as much as possible to be able to guarantee quality and consistency.

Managing her passionJuggling the two passions is not very challenging because Sheth Naturals is a passion as is dentistry. Initially, time management was a challenge, but she has since learnt to deal with this by creating time for what matters most.

“Life being about choices, I still have choices to make ahead as need arises, but for now, I have two things I enjoy doing; dentistry and Sheth Naturals,” she quips.

“My advice to other people who are looking forward to running a side hustle successfully, is to give it their all. The road curves in the right places and eventually guides you to your purpose,” she adds.

Dr. Gasheri’s biggest passion is good customer service and she admits that she loves nothing more than seeing a client walk away satisfied and confident of what she needs to know about her hair and skin. As such, she looks out for employees who reflect that side of her and carry her vision with utmost efficacy.

Some of her clients have tried all things with their skin and hair by the time they come to Sheth. Some are impatient and need care and follow up to ensure they have a good regimen that works for them. She therefore has to work with people who are patient and well versed with natural remedies for hair and skin solutions.

One of her biggest strengths is her firmness and discipline. She admits she has been influenced to change her mind only once in her life, and even then she ended up regretting it. All her decisions are thoroughly thought out and once a decision is made, it’s final. Sheth Naturals gives staff the chance to shine in their own areas. They know they are valuable and they can make their open decisions.

Mercy Kamana is a freelance writer based in Mombasa.


My advice to other people who are looking forward to running a side hustle successfully, is to give it their all. The road curves in the right places and eventually guides you to your purpose.”



Corporate Case Study

Itrade Company shares its journey towards becoming the 2017 Overall SME of the Year Award at the COYA/SMOYA awards.

BY BOAZ KISERO

In 2004, 10 young Kenyan college colleagues embraced an idea of forming a chama to help them pull resources together as a way of empow-ering themselves. The first step was to invest in stocks at the bourse, with the end game of getting into real estate

business.A testament of hard work,

resilience and commitment, the members, all in their 20s then, initially contributed Ksh5,000 to buy stocks at the Nairobi Stock Exchange for around two years. The

A tale of resilience and hardwork

team, by this time, had set its eyes at the ultimate price: real estate. This marked the birth of Itrade Company Limited in 2006, as Samuel Njenga, the Managing Director reveals. Since there was also the need to ensure a balanced mix of skills and experience in the composition of membership, three more directors were brought in, taking the tally to the current thirteen.

Real estate businessGuided by a clear mission statement of facilitating clients to acquire real

estate properties cost effectively while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction as well as maximising shareholder value, Itrade Company immediately embarked on the business of buying plots for speculation purposes. In 2008, it dawned on the directorship that they could do much more. The company begun buying huge chunks of land, subdividing and selling.

Itrade has other subsidiaries and is currently covering the entire spectrum of the real estate business. Other than the sale of vacant and



Corporate Case Study

serviced plots, the company has incorporated an arm that specialises in developing houses for sale. So far, two projects have been successfully completed. The first one is the Itrade Park in Ruiru- an exceptional residential estate comprising of 12 bungalow homes. Itrade Signature in Lower Kabete constitutes of 34 spacious 3- bedroom apartments. It offers the best of quality in a serene environment where space meets lifestyle. Itrade Gardens promise a bliss of beauty and tranquility. The development, comprising of 15 units lies 900m off the Eastern By-pass.

Another bigger project consisting of five blocks of apartments is also lined up for early next year.

Itrade has yet a third arm of business, comprising of a high-end

At the heart of our brand promise is delivery of products and services based on what we promise. This ensures that the customer comes back and also refers others to our business,” Samuel Njenga, MD.

hardware store - Styles & Finishes - located off the Eastern By-pass.

The company is also a registered contractor serving her own businesses, private developers, NGOs and county governments among others.

Samuel reveals that one of the key lessons in real estate is to create and develop a trusted name. A company can only cultivate a good name by delivering what it promises.

“At the heart of our brand promise is delivery of products and services based on what we promise. This ensures that the customer comes back and also refers others to our business,” he notes.

One of Itrade’s strong points is diversity. The MD has a background in Computer Science while the company boasts of a board diverse in the areas of IT, banking, accounting, engineering and interior design, among others.

Embracing best practicesThe 2017 COYA/SMOYA Gala night will for a long time remain in the minds of the Itrade fraternity. The company, making its debut in the Organisational Performance Index (OPI) process won the Leadership & Management and the Innovation, ICT, Knowledge Management awards besides scooping the Overall SME of the Year Award slot.

After the birth of the company, part of the decisions made were to embrace best practices. OPI process came in handy as it is known and respected in advocating for business excellence. At the level of Itrade’s Company, it was only fair that it gets an outside eye to look at its business processes, identify gaps that exist and find ways to address the gaps.

According to Samuel, the seven OPI determinants generally cut across their operation processes. Their major aim of going through

OPI was for self-evaluation purposes, a professional look at the company and a fair view of the business.

The place of partnershipsSamuel, together with his team was involved in the evaluation, site visits and self-assessment process with the OPI team from the beginning to the end. Itrade was able to identify some areas of weakness and has already put measures in place to mitigate the same. Some of the gaps identified include finance management, HR weaknesses and CSR flaws. As one way of giving back to the society, the company is already partnering with Kenyatta University’s Department of Architecture and Interior Design to offer industrial attachment to students. It also has another programme of assisting students to better their learning skills.

Itrade shone in the Leadership and Management determinant, having put emphasis on structuring its vision clearly to staff and stakeholders. Moreover, it has a fully functional board, which formulates, finances and monitors the execution of strategies.

Going forward, the company has trained its sights on expanding its products offering and services. It looks forward to embracing complementary business areas, including manufacturing in real estate-related business frontiers, prefabrication of interiors business, coming up with low cost houses besides attaining a KSh1 billion turnover status.

Boaz Kisero is a marketer and writer at KIM




Smart Leadership

Understanding the real benefits of learning from millennials BY ROBERT KANYUA

Millen-nials are cor-porate assets and

“crown jewels” with the potential to generate value for organisations. As a leader, your organisations’ competitive edge and career may lie in leveraging the knowledge of mil-lennials through reverse mentoring.

When we think of mentoring, we

Reverse mentoring conjure up images of experienced executives with a higher age and rank, sharing ideas with some younger, junior and usually less experienced individuals. Experience is essential in organisations and more so in mentorship. Nevertheless, does an experienced executive have something to learn from a millennial with no business experience or visibility in the organisation?

The age-old saying that ‘you never stop learning’ is a truism. Despite our ingrained biases, older

executives at the workplace have a lot to learn from “millennials” through reverse mentoring.

Reverse mentoring is a social exchange whereby a senior and more experienced individual seeks mentorship from a younger and less experienced individual who holds a wealth of knowledge or skill on a particular topic that is growing and constantly evolving.

The concept of reverse mentoring was born in 1999 by Jack Welch, a management guru and former CEO of General Electric, upon realising that he and his senior management



Smart Leadership

team were challenged when it came to using the internet. To bridge this digital challenge, Welch directed 500 of his top executives to find junior-level mentors in their 20s and 30s who were knowledgeable about the internet to teach them computer skills.

Since 1999, there has been a shift from the traditional mentor-protégé model perpetuated by a differential in experience, towards the reverse mentorship model where junior employees “mentor up” their older and senior counterparts in bridging the digital divide.

The practice - predicated on the premise that everyone within an organisation has something significant to contribute to another’s personal and professional growth - has been adopted in leading corporates including United Healthcare, Target, Tesco, Cisco, Ogilvy and Mather, P&G, Hewlett

When it comes to reverse mentoring, top executives have a lot to learn from millennials with no business experience or visibility in the organisation.”

Packard and Deloitte.The power of ‘mentoring up’ lies

in fostering deliberate interactions between leadership and millennials through cross-talk and discussion.

Two-way street Reverse mentorship must not always flip the traditional mentor-protégé model on its head. A “reciprocal” mentoring model is recommended where each party brings something to the table.

The successful reverse mentorship interaction between Ron Garrow, 50, MasterCard’s Chief HR Officer and Rebecca Kaufman, a Gen-Y mentor, illustrates this reciprocity.

In late 2013, Rebecca, was a young member of the communications team at MasterCard and only 18 months into her career. As a ‘digital native’ she was social media savvy.

Garrow reached out to a Gen-Y mentor in the wake of a report that indicated that MasterCard had a weekly social media audience of 30 million people whom he wanted to engage. He had worked for 32 years in the conservative banking sector. He was “tech impaired” and felt intimidated by social media having grown accustomed to the bureaucracy of “multiple approvals” before any information was shared publicly.

Mentoring upRebecca volunteered to “mentor-

up” Garrow by helping him sign up for a Twitter account, learn how to engage on social media and build his personal brand by crafting tweets based on profiles of influential HR professionals.

This relationship proved valuable to Garrow, Kaufman and MasterCard. Garrow was able to confidently articulate himself on social media while Kaufman got a boost in her career when she was

recruited to help the company design internal communications in a way that appealed to millennials. In her short tenure at MasterCard, Rebecca has held several critical roles including managing MasterCard’s digital and social media platforms globally.

Beyond social mediaReverse mentoring is not limited to technology and social media. According to Sanghamitra Chaudhuri, a University of Minnesota professor who has extensively researched the topic, organisations should go beyond the fad and align the practice to a strong business need.

Chaudhuri finds it especially useful in understanding current organisational issues and trends, driving fresh ideas and strengthening an organisations’ competitive edge.

Any organisation that wants to maintain an influence in the market by continuously offering relevant products and services must maintain a pulse on millennials who hold a large share of the global purchasing power.

According to a survey by Deloitte The Deloitte Millennial Survey 2014, millennials will make up 75 per cent of the global workforce by 2025. Through reverse mentoring, corporates can use millennials as sounding boards to discover valuable insight on their distinct behaviours, preferences and interests and apply it to manage talent.

Robert Kanyua is the Managing Principal at Pro Excellence

Management Ltd. Email: robert@proexcellence-

management.com



Managers In The Making

Things I have learnt in my first jobWhat do you do when your first employ does not match what you did in school? Do you pass the opportunity and wait for something else to come along or do you grab it and learn all you can?

Go to school, get the best grades, go to a good uni-versity

and get a well-paying job. Those are the words my parents used to tell me. They forgot to encourage me to build my skills that would be necessary for my future.

Now having finished my three levels the fourth level is here with a bang- getting a job. “Get a well-paying job” were my parent’s next words. I got the job and wondered whether to take it or leave it as the pay was not what I expected. The work was also not related to anything I had studied. Day one on the job and I was given some simple training and a bunch of files to work on. My expectations were crushed.I had expected a full office orientation and a one-day training. .

Everyone around me seemed busy and no one seemed to care about the new girl in the office. Asking a question seemed like a mistake. I had to find a way to work on my own. I didn’t work much but I observed a lot.

Meanwhile I have learnt the following lessons:

BY MERCY MUENDO

1. Attitude is very important. I chose to have a positive attitude because what I did

in school is not what I was doing in my job. I decided to be a solutions-oriented employee rather than focus on the department I had found a job in not being a match.

2. Learning to manage my manager.I was supposed to make my

supervisor’s work easier so anything I did or said was supposed to have actual evidence as back up. I did my best to help my boss grow me instead of asking him to solve my problems. I presented ideas of how we would handle thorny situations, and solicited his thoughts on my ideas.

3. Pay attention to the small things.Cross checking details to me

came natural and I took it to top my game. It was an easy way to build trust overtime with people I didn’t know that well.

4. Always look for new ways to learn.Each time I learnt something

new, I knew I was winning. I got interested in knowing things around the different departments. I made an effort of learning things outside of work. Business coach Tanya Monsef

Bunger echoes this sentiment: “Be a sponge and have a thirst for knowledge.”

5. It’s not always going to be easy but nothing is impossible.Sometimes things appeared

impossible in the morning and seemed very trivial by evening. Figuring out ways to break a problem down into smaller parts throughout the day can go a long way.

6. Know and own your role. I found my own place within the company and became the

point-person for that specific area. I used to call it “owning my domain.”Now I have qualified with skills I didn’t learn in college and leading a team has been so good. I have gotten to understand the merit of working as a team - the outcome is good as different ideas produce great things, building a strong commitment to what is good for both the organisation and me as an employee. Every day brings different opportunities so we take them and by the end we learn something new and we grow.

Mercy Muendo just graduated from the Kenya Institute of Management with a Diploma in Procurement.



Inspiration

A job rotation helped Duncan Juma realise that his back office customer care job was a mismatch with his passions.

I love my job!

BY DUNCAN JUMA

I was not supposed to take up that job as back office customer care representative at a leading telecommunica-tions company. Everything about that role was outside my preference based on my inner design and wiring. I am a life-of-the-party kind of person and I love interact-

ing with people. It’s easy for me to establish rapport with strangers and so working in an environment that stifles this was quite an exam.

During my six-year stay at the company, I went on job rotation in the Enterprise Business unit as corporate account manager. This changed my life.

The first week I experienced an information overload. My ignorance on the B2B (business to

business) products and processes was exposed. But I adapted and liked the adrenalin rush that came with the role. The target for the department that year was KSh8.1 billion. This meant life was happening too fast. But after sometime I got the hang of it and I was roping in sales like a guru. I desired to make this job rotation permanent.

The roles were advertised and I was successful but there was a HR hitch and I could not move from grade 8 to grade 6. What this meant was that my job rotation was over and I was meant to go back to my sponsor department. I quit the day I reported back to the Customer Management Department.

I needed to be free and enjoy

what I was doing. The pay was good but I was dying in the inside- I wasn’t cut out for this. I had to face the wilderness to find my life.

I vigorously began Mceeing at weddings and would get between KSh80,000-100,000 per month working for four days in a week. Corporates would give more for a 2 to 3-hour engagements. I was having fun in the process and I was becoming alive.

Leveraging on these networks I formed a team building and experiential soft skills training company, Anthill Champions, as a vehicle to help me do what I wanted to do. I left an 8-5 job to do 24/7 what I love and had passion about.

Fun and great humour is our distinguishing mark as we excellently craft employee engagement solutions.

Entrepreneurial challenges have confirmed to me that just because you can do it doesn’t mean you can run a business. What you don’t realise by leaving the comfort of a reliable salaried job is that you need to put your neck out to get business. If you are new in the industry, however good your products are, if you are not known then your shelf life is very short.

Sometimes when you are not keen on training need assessment you can misdiagnose your interventions to clients. I had to go back to school and do a coaching certification to help clients own their resolutions without getting a prescribed solution from us. This has been effective.

But the benefits of running a business outweigh the challenges.

Duncan Juma is the CEO of Anthill Champions.



The Law

Get involved in your community The Constitution gives the citizenry power to engage in governance processes at both national and county levels through public participation platforms.



The Law

BY GRACE MAINGI

Violet Barasa looks down lovingly into the eyes of her seven month-old infant as she recalls the day she delivered

her bright-eyed baby at the Ochude Dispensary, a few metres from her home. A year ago this would not have been possible for Violet as the dispensary had no delivery bed and lacked the necessary facilities for child birth. This would have meant that Violet would need to travel far to be able to deliver her baby.

Ochude Dispensary is located in Chakol South Ward, Busia County and has recently benefited from enhanced service delivery, following an intervention of the community.

With support from the Community Empowerment Development Centre (CEDC), a local non-governmental organisation based in Busia County, the community was able to undertake a community scorecard on the dispensary and through the process advocate for the key services needed. Through this process Ochude Dispensary was allocated resources from the county government that included a 2,000-litre water tank, one delivery bed, two resting beds, two fire extinguishers and an extra nurse.

Community involvementWithout community involvement in resource allocation, another financial year would have gone by and a focus put either on the wrong needs of the dispensary or no

allocation at all to its improvement. This dispensary serves a wide cross section of the population in Busia County and its improvement has impacted the lives of children, women and men.

Violet’s story is a testament to the benefit and need for public participation in Kenya.

A key aspect of the success of devolution is the degree it transfers powers to the citizenry to influence decision-making and hold public officials to account for administrative and political acts they make on behalf of the citizens.

Governance processesThe Constitution of Kenya 2010 has key provisions that relate to public participation. It bestows all sovereign power to the people and this power is to be exercised directly by individual citizens or indirectly, through elected representatives as espoused in Article 1 of the Constitution. To ensure better running of devolution, public participation is important. One major goal of devolution is to ensure that the citizenry get involved in governance processes. In addition, public participation aids the citizenry to hold the county governments accountable geared towards realisation of public good.

From the planning stage at the counties, residents ought to be involved. For example, during the County Annual Development Plans (ADP), members of the public can give their input to the County Assemblies through attending public fora and presenting memoranda. The consultations enable the public to give their views, based on sector priorities. Citizens can state their priorities during the planning stages. Hence, they do not

feel that development is imposed on them, or they have been left out.

Social accountabilityThere is a sense of ownership in the running of counties, where there is public participation.

Public participation is also the cornerstone of social accountability where the public hold their leaders to account. The citizenry is supported by civil society organisations (CSO) to ensure social accountability initiatives are given prominence. In turn, social accountability results in better governance.

However, it is important to take into cognisance that public participation faces a number of challenges. Some of these include insufficient dissemination of information by county governments, inadequate civic education and inability to entrench public participation in county laws.

Despite these challenges, the public should be supported to participate through provision of information. Uraia Trust supports civic education and engagement actions aimed at empowering Kenyans to play their rightful role in devolution. Through partnerships with bodies such as the Kenya Institute of Management (KIM), Uraia Trust hopes to educate and inform professionals on their key role in public participation in order to contribute in the development of their counties and the nation as a whole.

Grace Maingi is the Executive Director, Uraia Trust




Country Report

What African agriculture can learn from Brazil

In November 2017, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, took a series of bets on Africa’s ability to feed itself, lift millions of its people out of poverty and help feed the world. The huge potential of the continent –

fertile soils and up to 360 million hectares of uncultivated arable land, in addition to its status as the largest producer of a number of food and cash crops – puts Africa in a strong position to feed the world. Howev-er, there is still much to be done.

The idea that Africa can feed the world is not overly ambitious. Indeed, it is realistic if all hands can be on deck to make it happen. We know this because Brazil has shown us what is possible. Brazil, the largest country in South America and the fifth largest in the world, with over 80 million hectares of arable land, is one of the three largest producers and exporters of soybeans, sugar, coffee, orange juice, beef, tobacco, ethanol and broiler chickens.

Science and technologyBrazil was able to transform its agriculture sector into one of the most competitive in the world within a generation. Despite its acidic, weathered and tropical soils with low fertility, Brazil is notable for its science-based, technology-driven and high-yielding tropical agriculture.

For us in Africa, about 874 million hectares of our land is considered

suitable for agriculture. Although 83 per cent of this has fertility challenges and other limitations that require huge improvement costs for optimum performance, one of the lessons we can gather from Brazil’s agriculture success is the development of new crops and forage varieties that can withstand harsh environmental conditions.

Commercial farmingFor instance, research and entrepreneurial efforts in Brazil led to the development and cultivation of soybeans for lower altitudes. This variety of soybeans could yield even higher than those produced in temperate regions.

To change the farming environment in Africa, we must adopt new

BY MOJISOLA OJEBODE



Country Report

“Brazil was able to transform its agriculture sector into one of the most competitive in the world within a generation, with only 13.5 per cent of the world’s potentially arable land and 15.2 per cent of the world’s renewable water resources. Meanwhile, the whole of Africa sits on roughly 60 per cent of the total global uncultivated land.”

technologies, modern innovations – including improved seeds – selective agrochemicals, and mechanisation of agricultural activities. In fact, we need to encourage more large scale or commercial farming systems, which will maximise the use of modern machineries, reduce labour cost and increase productivity.

Increased research into plant breeding and genetic engineering based on the unique soil types in Africa and the prevailing climate conditions is a major requirement to develop high-yielding crops, maximise available land and improve the competitiveness of Africa’s agriculture. We will have more than enough to feed ourselves and export to other nations.

For areas in Africa struggling with drought, a number of interventions are available. For instance, there is a water-efficient maize variety that can yield four tonnes per hectare. The yield surpasses the existing commercial varieties by 56 per cent.

Investment in energy, infrastructureAn ambitious industrialisation policy was executed in Brazil to limit food importation by using exchange controls and subsidised interest rates for loans to food processing industries. The industry and services sectors directly linked to agriculture were also transformed.

Investments in energy and transport infrastructure, which are important for agricultural expansion,

were put in place. As a result, agricultural output was significantly expanded, agricultural exports were diversified, and food prices were reduced. The industrialisation policy translated into an increase in the share of industrial Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from about 20 per cent in 1960 to over 50 per cent of total GDP by 2004.

The policies that played a central role in the process of agricultural modernisation in Brazil include support for:

(i) Agricultural research and development;

(ii) Rural extension and availability of well-subsidized financial credits for capital financing; and

(iii) Purchase of modern inputs and machineries.

As a result of trade liberalisation and the expansion of agriculture into new regions in Brazil, the country has become one of the world’s leading cotton producers and an important competitor to the US’, Europe’s and Asia’s cotton markets.

Towards a better futureThe continent should stop spending so much money on food importation. Over USD35 billion annual spending on food importation, which is expected to reach USD110 billion by 2030, will do us no good. It will keep countries on the continent trapped in poverty as long as they remain consumers instead of being producers.

Countries across the continent must invest more in developing or adopting tested technologies to massively expand our supply of food commodities, by increasing their capacities for food production and processing.

There should be adequate financial support to mechanise agriculture systems and boost commercial agriculture. To support large scale and smallholder farmers, rural infrastructure, especially electricity and good road networks, must be assured.

African countries should come together to rapidly strengthen public policies and private sector participation to allow the region better access to external markets and better value for our commodities in such markets.

Africa has the ability to feed not only its people, but also the rest of the world. The continent must look to learn from those who transformed their agriculture in the past, if it must move bravely into the future.

Mojisola Ojebode, a Financial Nigeria Columnist, is a Nigerian

biochemist and the founder and product developer at Moepelorse

Bio Resources. She is also a Global Innovation Through Science and

Technology (GIST) awardee, a Mandela Washington fellow, and an

Aspen New Voices fellow.



Money Matters

Plan for your money wisely

Financial planning enables individuals to plan their cash flow, which then makes it possible to achieve their short term, medium term and long term goals and increase their disposable incomes.



Money Matters

Financial planning is the ability to understand who you are in terms of your assets and liabilities and this enables you to make sound financial

decisions for your “today” and future. Financial planning is a per-sonal responsibility and everyone should strive to have their financial plans well researched and executed at the right time. Generally, there are three pillars of financial planning:

1. AccumulationThis is the gradual accumulation of wealth. Wealth can be accumulated through wages, salaries, contractual savings, business income/profits, chamas, sacco shares/dividends, bank savings/ fixed deposits.

2. Growth and conservationThis is investing the accumulated wealth while ensuring that appropriate wealth protection measures are put in place. One has to do due diligence, have a long term view on investment, diversify their scope, have business insurance in place and medical insurance and a life cover among other conservation measures.

3. DistributionThis is the transfer of accumulated wealth to the next generation i.e. succession planning which involves beneficiary nomination, estate planning, trust funds among others.

Financial planning enables individuals to plan their cash flow which then makes it possible to

A good percentage of retired people spend most of their retirement savings dealing with health conditions that were caused/accelerated by poor financial planning.”

BY ALFRED MATHU

achieve their short term, medium term and long term goals and increase their disposable incomes. From a financial planning perspective, the human life cycle can be divided into three levels: childhood, adulthood and the succession phase. In childhood to around age 23 years, the individual usually takes no responsibility on any financial decisions and naturally parents are in charge. By 24 years most people finish education and take up their first job. This is the most aggressive phase in the human financial planning journey and this is where most financial mistakes are made, and depending on the age of the person, some of the mistakes can be corrected while others, especially those committed in late adulthood, spell out consequences that a person has to contend with for the rest of their life. The succession phase kicks in after the age of 55 years where most people retire or increase their focus to retirement planning.

For good financial planning, ask yourself the following:

1. Have you written down your financial goals?2. Do your expenses exceed your income?3. Do your expenses/investments increase when your income increases?4. Have you taken a loan to finance your lifestyle or buy consumer goods?5. Do you have a will in place? Do

you update it as and when required?6. Are there good goals that you have been postponing /7. If you were disabled today, how long could your current savings sustain your lifestyle?8. In terms of your net worth, are you in credit or debit? Are you investing?

There are critical money lessons that we can learn from the Big five animals. The lion eats first, ahead of the pack. You too should “eat first”. The leopard never lets its prey out of sight. Patiently plan and move towards the prey, never backing off or giving up-focus and stop procrastination.The African elephant never forgets. It remembers the places it has been, where it gets water and green vegetation. The rhino when threatened, looks for the biggest threat and charges, taking swift control of the situation. Confront your debts and all your financial success threats e.g. spending habits.The mighty buffalo steadily grows in numbers knowing its strength and future are in its numbers-diversification, different investment instruments have diverse horizons and risk.

Alfred Mathu is the General Manager Retail at UAP-Old Mutual Group




Executive Chat

STORY & PHOTO BY SAMMI NDERITU

The last one year in Kenya can best be described as a dramatic sea-sonin regards to political happenings. Prolonged

campaign periods were followed by two elections and two Supreme Court hearingsas political leaders fought for a piece of the pie, the country’s top leadership.

Kenya’s political dramas aside, various countries in Africa are undergoing leadership and governance crisis and in the words of Prof. PLO Lumumba, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and Tanzania, Africa is in amid-life crisis.

He cites Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Angola, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Eritrea, South Sudan, Burundi and Guinnea Bissau as nations currently going though leadership and governance crisis.

“When one talks about leadership and governance without defining what these are, we must pose the foundational question who is a leader?” said Prof. Lumumba during a presentation at the Kenya Institute of Management Fellows’ Luncheon held in November 2017.

“Chinua Achebe, Nigerian author, in a book that could very well be titled ‘The trouble with Africa’ but

Former Anti-corruption boss PLO Lumumba calls for leaders to exemplify selflessness and service if they want to take the country forward.

A look at Africa’s leadership crisis



Executive Chat

As a leader, you have been given the opportunity and resources in order to improve the quality of life of the people you are leading.

is titled ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’ says and I agree that the problem of Africa is simply and squarely about leadership,” he said.

Prof. Lumumba reminisces on his childhood days growing up in Nairobi and notes how the then City Council of Nairobi worked efficiently. Water could be drunk directly from the tap since it was not contaminated, public schools got text books and pupils got free lunch. Garbage was collected regularly. He says public institutions worked and processes happened as they were supposed to.

“We went to schools, acquired degrees at graduate, masters and PhD level and then we were given the opportunity to govern our institutions. We killed Kenya Railways, East African Airways,textile and sugar industries. Kenya Meat Commission collapsed even as we continued to eat meat.

potential.”He cites the doctors’ and nurses’

strike that both lasted for four months while the government was reluctant to bring them to an end.

Ingredients of leadership “For those of you who have had

the privilege of leading institutions, ask yourself a - how have you led it?” posed Prof. Lumumba.

He said that leadership’s greatest ingredient is service and that is why people should consider it an honour and privilege when serving.

“As a leader, you have been given the opportunity and resources in order to improve the quality of life of the people you are leading. And if the government does not achieve this, then it is the role of the citizen to change it,” he added.

The professor noted thatin many African countries those who have been elected think they have been given an opportunity to “eat” instead ofserving selflessy.

“We have individuals who occupy positions of leadership in Africa and have arrogated to themselves the monopoly of wisdom and history teaches that any leader who does this often leads his people to chaos,” said Prof. Lumumba.

In conclusion, the outgoing CEO of the Kenya Law School pointed out that leadership is about having certain ideals and taboos.

“These are the things that as a leader you cannot do because they are not compatible with leadership. Leadership and governance requires humility and doing what is right always.”


Sammi Nderitu is the staff writer, digital media, photographer,

Management Magazine.

This is a tragedy,” said Prof. Lumumba.

He noted that as a country, we cannot realise the full potential in leadership and governance unless we have a change of mind. “At a certain stage, we thought that our problem was the Constitution and I was deeply involved in making it. We came up with a draft and thought it would address the Kenyan problem of leadership and governance but sadly politicians took it away and subjected it to their own short terms interventions and subjected it to a referendum.Kenyansrejected it,” he said.

Ceasefire document.Prof. Lumumba observed that

after Kenyans nearly consumed themselves during the 2007/8 post-election violence, the country enacted the 2010 Constitution “which was essentially a ceasefire document.” It was implemented in the hope that among many other things it would devolve certain political powers and economic responsibilities. But without changing ourselves and attitudes devolution couldn’t simply be the magic bullet or magic wand that would change Kenya dramatically.

Five years down the line after devolution and Prof. Lumumba is blunt in his assessment of it.

“What we have is a band of 47 plus thieves who have stolen from these counties and will never be punished because impunity stands in our way. Several of them suddenly became multi-millionaires and as citizens, we Kenyans don’t even question but sing their praises and call them leaders,” he said.

The former anti-corruption czar points out that today as a country, “we have normalised the absurd and that means we can never realise our



Smart Solutions

Social media activity coupled with implicit online activity like casual web search or browsing, online shopping, blogging, calling and texting all contribute to building a richly accurate digital footprint.

Your digital footprint could kill your career



Smart Solutions

BY BENSON MUGAMBI

In case you want to have a glimpse of how much of your personal information is freely available online, start by conducting a simple Google search of your name. In the unlikely circumstances you don’t find any relevant information or at least photo-

graphs, then you have not existed – online that is. If you have an email, a social media account or any kind of online presence, it is likely there are traces of your personal information openly out there. Scientists are call-ing these traces of online personal information the digital footprint.

How significant is this digital footprint and what opportunities does it portend for the modern recruitment and human resource

resource manager needs to pay attention. A 2012 joint research conducted in the UK revealed that one in five bosses have rejected a job applicant after checking their profile on social media. Tonnes of personal information lying openly online can be searched and retrieved without requiring any form of authentication or authorisation, and without the faintest knowledge of the concerned individuals.

A 2016 report by Jobvite notes that at least 87 per cent of recruiters checked LinkedIn accounts of their potential candidates, 43 per cent checked Facebook and 22 per cent checked Twitter.

Social media is enabling recruiters and human resource managers to peek into personality, behaviour and character of their staff and potential recruits. According to CareerBuilder, recruiters want to know in advance about the professional presentation of their potential candidates and how the candidate would fit in the company culture. Mostly, they are looking for information that might not be available on the curriculum vitae and that might be difficult to extract from a formal interview.

By analysing the online social data of employees and potential candidates, organisations can discover and predict behavioural issues that can hinder performance or jeopardise their corporate image.

Artificial intelligence algorithms such as the Association Rule are being tested on analysing human behaviour against social circles. This means that with enough data, it is possible to pick out a bad guy by just examining their friendship circles.

Benson Mugambi is an Information Management specialist at Tullow Oil

PLC (Nairobi)Email: [email protected]

Based on your digital footprint, it is possible for companies and organisations to profile your aspirations, habits, preferences, values, and intentions and not surprisingly model your future behaviour.”

managers? Should today’s job seekers care about their digital footprint?

International Telecommunications Union – ITU estimates that in 2017, more than half of the global population uses the Internet. That number is about 3.75 billion of the entire 7.3 billion global population. Strikingly, the number of active social media users hit 2.5 billion in 2017. Statista extimates that the population of social media users will hit 3.02 billion by 2021.

Social mediaWhat these trends and statistics indicate is that social media is the key contributor to our digital footprint. With the incessant posting, commenting, liking, sharing and forwarding, there is adequate digital footprint to build a complete personal profile of any average Internet user – hassle free.

Social media activity coupled with implicit online activity like casual web search, online shopping, blogging, calling and texting all contribute to building a richly accurate digital footprint.

While a digital footprint has its benefits and costs ramifications, in reality, it boils down to how you understand and manage your online presence. Your footprint can contribute to a positive online reputation, enabling you to repeatedly log in to websites or submit personal details. On the other hand, it may allow others to follow your online history such as the sites you visit, what you search for, who are your friends and what you like. This means people and organisations can build profiles about you without your knowledge or consent.

Implications for HRThis is where the modern human



County Focus

Meru’s four-point plan for successful devolutionGovernor Kiraitu Murungi has proposed four different funds to focus resources on targeted populations. These include the Youth Service Fund, Ward Development Fund, Women Fund and Disability Fund.

BY LOYD KIBAARA

Like many coun-ties, the Mount Kenya East Coun-ties of Embu, Tharaka Nithi and Meru are facing a challenge in identifying devel-opment models

that can deliver to their people. With less than 30 per cent of resources available for development, most governors are forced to follow an uncoordinated approach to develop-ment and focus on delivering polit-ically beneficial small projects that have little or no impact on the lives of citizens. Local revenue collection doesn’t add much in county kitties and the situation is made worse by

the bloated work forces many coun-ties are struggling to manage. Sal-aries in some county take up over 60 per cent of total revenue leaving little for other recurrent expenditure and even less for development.

There is need for innovative way of doing things. Meru seems to be the county to watch for a new proposed model that aims to use a broad based participation model that aims to exploit professionals and other leaders in resource mobilisation and act as an advisory wing to the county government.

Borrowed modelWhile other governors are struggling for ways of delivering development under the circumstances, Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi has decided to introduce a new county

development model borrowed from his leadership when he was MP, South Imenti. The “development from bellow” first appeared in his 1992 campaign manifesto.

This model that relied on what he termed at “triple alliance” was applied in South Imenti with remarkable success. The constituency remains the most developed in the region in terms of road infrastructure, agriculture, water supply and education.

The triple alliance managed to link local administration, urban based professionals from South Imenti and the then existing local rural groups including women and youth to form a partnership for development.

To organise the seemly complex partnership, Kiraitu created six



County Focus

This model that relied on what he termed at “triple alliance” was applied in South Imenti with remarkable success. The constituency remains the most developed in the region in terms of road infrastructure, agriculture, water supply and education.

basic pillars. These were the South Imenti Development Association (SIDA), the South Imenti Women Development Association (SWODA), the South Imenti Youth Development Program (SIYDP), the South Imenti Sustainable Education Fund (SIEF), the Kiraitu Murungi Foundation (KMF) and added the Constituency Development Fund on the list. That is like having six different CDFs in his constituency.

Bringing in expertsSIDA had branches in Meru and Nairobi to enable professionals to participate in developing the constituency. Through this, Kiraitu worked with government and donors with the assistance of experts serving in different bodies to bring funding, projects and other development resources to make South Imenti what

it is now.Kiraitu has proposed a similar

development model, one that has not been tried in any other county.

He has proposed four different funds to focus resources on targeted populations. These include Youth Service Fund, the Ward Development Fund, the Women Fund and the

Disability Fund.

Development boardsKiraitu had also promised to radically transform the governance system of Meru County by focusing on widening the scope and space for consultation through involving the people and their leaders in decision making. His plan will be achieved by establishing institutions from ward to county level to enhance participatory planning. His government plans to establish different development boards in what he terms as a forum for consultation between different county leaders.

With new governors struggling to figure out how to deliver on their promises, Kiraitu seems to be at home and well on his way to create a legacy by repeating a model that he has tested and confirmed works. This could provide a benchmark for other governors in Kenya.

Loyd Kibaara is the Country Director, Kenya, Tisna Education

&Research Services International.Email: [email protected]



Leadership Tactics

5 Tips for scaling your influence as a millennial entrepreneur How to turn your name into a legacy in your industry

It shouldn’t be surprising that more and more millennial entrepreneurs are pursuing thought leadership today. Influencer marketing content delivers 11 times higher return on investment than traditional forms of digital marketing. With so much trust (and in

return, revenue) put into today’s millennial influencers, it’s clear why Gen-Y entrepreneurs are positioning themselves as the new “it” business people.

For those entrepreneurs who are just getting started in the world of thought leadership, here are the five tips for scaling your influence.

1. Choose one or two channels.With young influencers making

their mark on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Periscope, it often gives the false impression that in order to get visibility, you need to be on every channel. This is an easy recipe for burn-out, low-quality work and content marketing resentment.

Instead of burying yourself, choose one or two public platforms where you can focus on growing your community. You will find that whenever a company wants to partner with you as an influencer, it will almost always be because they saw the power of your public following.

2. develop local influence.Having a small, local following is

easier to accomplish and is a perfect stepping stone before jumping to the next level.

3. interview thought leaders.An interview is also a great

starting point for a relationship that can bloom into partnerships, collaborations, mentorships, and more. Yet simultaneously, it’s also one of the most casual and flattering proposals you can ask of an influencer. Identify thought leaders who still have prominent followings but are still accessible to the media and their fans. The secret is to find thought leaders with a few less gatekeepers and one whom you might have six degrees or less of separation with.

4. get live speaking events.Don’t feel pressured to suddenly

speak at international events attended by thousands of individuals. Instead, identify local entrepreneur-oriented events that you think you could add value to as a thought leader.

5. get the right coach.To strengthen your skills as a

thought leader is to hang out with other thought leaders. Getting a deeper understanding of their approaches to business, mindset practices, and confidence give you the tools you need to adopt those traits as well.

can trust with guidance, support, and feedback on every step of your journey to becoming a thought leader. Nothing great can ever be achieved alone, so having someone who’s just a few steps ahead of you to help you on your journey is a priceless asset.

Source: Entrepreneur.com



Agri Business

New efficient way of plant breeding in KenyaGene sequencing is vital in increasing agricultural productivity and creating drought tolerant and disease resistant planting materials.

A new DNA sequencing machine that is set to revo-lutionise plant breeding in the country was recently unveiled at

the Nairobi-based African Orphan Crops Consortium Laboratory (AOCC lab) at the World Agroforest-ry Centre headquarters in Nairobi.

The first of its kind on the continent, the machine known as HiSeq4000 is said to be 150 times faster than DNA sequencing machines currently in the country.

Whereas in the past researchers had to wait for three months to get results, the new technology shortens the duration to three days.

“Scientists will send their materials to the lab and get results only in three days,” said Prof Prasad Hendre, a genomics’ scientist at the lab, which currently works to improve neglected African crops.

The Illumina HiSeq4000 uses innovative patterned flow cell technology to provide rapid, high performance sequencing and will also enable the Consortium to sequence parallel lines from over 20 of the 101 orphaned crops that it deals with. Gene sequencing is vital in increasing agricultural productivity and creating drought tolerant and disease resistant planting materials.

“If maize breeders get DNA signatures associated with a trait that gives the register, breeders will then select that particular plant with the signature and be assured that the first progeny that comes out of the plant will be tolerant to the disease,” said the professor.

While launching the machine, the scientists called on the government to invest in ‘neglected African crops’ to enhance food security. Prof Hendre noted that about 101 orphaned crops have not undergone genetic improvements like the top 10 agricultural crops.

The continent, he says, is still not ready in terms of genomic improvements because of a host

of challenges including political, financial and technological reasons.

Most breeding programmes are still very conventional such that finding the right planting material from a population can take a decade.

The consortium is sequencing ‘neglected African crops’ such as finger millets, pumpkins, dolichos beans (njahi), amaranth, tamarind (mkwanju) and oil palm, among other traditional crops to improve them and make them broadly available to smallholder farmers.

Article was first published in Smartfarmerkenya.com



Healthy Living

Is your child playing enough?Play has a crucial role in brain development among children as shown by various researches, supporting intellectual, emotional and social abilities.



Healthy Living

BY DR JUSTINE ODIONYI

The recommended level of physical activity by the WHO for children between ages of five to 17 years is at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily”.

Promotion of physical ac-tivity among adults has elicited a lot of attention in the recent past. People are learning

the importance of staying active, taking up a sport, walking, jogging or going to the gym. Children on the other hand are expected to naturally not have a challenge with physical activity since in our traditional set-up physical play time was more than enough.The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines physical activity as any body movements pro-duced by skeletal muscles and results in energy expenditure. Physical activ-ity can be achieved through working, doing household chores, engaging

in leisure activities and physical play. WHO further explains that it is beyond exercise, which is planned coordinated movements and is a sub-set of physical activity.

The recommended level of physical activity by the WHO for children between ages of five to 17 years is at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily. Most children engage in physical activities through play and sports. Children usually find themselves playing naturally when the environment and setup is conducive.

Play has a crucial role in brain development among children as shown by various researches. Play supports intellectual, emotional and social abilities for children as stated by Dr David Whitebread from Cambridge University in his research on the importance of play. Play enables children to solve problems and conflicts and they learn to share and express themselves. It also promotes self-esteem.

Physical play provides other health benefits too like strengthening muscles, strengthening bones and preventing obesity. Those deprived of play will exhibit deficiency in some of these skills, which will follow them even to adulthood.

Limited spacesThere are many factors in Kenya, especially in the urban areas, that have prohibited play among children. Many middle class families live in apartments with limited spaces for children to play. Sometimes due to security reasons, children are forced to stay indoors. Urbanisation has forced many children to be picked very early in the morning for school and endure long commute hours in traffic, thereby denying them an opportunity to play. Despite Kenyan

school health policy conforming to the WHO Global School Health Initiative policy which emphasises the role of play and physical activity, some schools lack adequate space for play.

Parents’ interventionUnfortunately, most Kenyan urban parents have little or no time to play with their children or just to ensure their children’s play time is secured. The parents who are supposed to be the first line of defence to protect play time make it worse by replacing their absence with electronic gadgets which unfortunately take away the most coveted time for physical play replacing it with virtual games which are in themselves passive with negative effects. Internet games are not only appealing but also addictive to children.

What should parents then do to support, promote and protect play time for their children? Parents have a crucial role to ensure play happens and is available for children right from infancy. They need to be deliberate and ensure children get their necessary physical activity through play at home and in school. Parents should be available to play with their children too. It is one of the most effective ways to cultivate and pass the right values to children. During the interactions with children, parents will bond further through reinforced communication as they play together.

Dr Justine Odionyi is the Senior Technical Advisor- Paediatric and Adolescent HIV services/Quality Improvement Lead at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.




What I Read

Books challenge, inspire and motivate me

How would you describe your reading habits?I am a mix of two things; I am normally specific about what I want to read – more of texts on current affairs and literature with a focus on leadership and strategy – but at the same time I am also like a sponge. There will be times I will just read anything I come across – it could be the random Harvard Business Review, a text on public relations, something from JK Rowling’s collection or some random month-old magazine. I’ll pretty much work on taking in as much as I can from any piece of literature I get my hands on and thereafter synthesise what’s of most value to any challenges and projects I’m handling or conversations I have had or need to have. I have made it a habit to read at least an hour a day; preferably at 4am every day.

How has reading helped shape your thinking?Getting to know and appreciate other viewpoints will challenge you to be more analytical and reflective; it helps to be aware of the genesis of things thus giving you an appreciation of why we are where we are today.

What kind of books do you enjoy? Material that touches on current affairs as well as inspirational literature with a focus on leadership and strategy. It has always been my

MURUGI NDWIGA talks to George Mlaghui, Telkom Chief Communications Officer, about his reading habits.

passion to see how something can be done differently to the root of it and why it had to happen.

What book has been most intriguing lately?I remember reading The Power of Vision by Myles Munroe in 2005. I always wanted to take a ‘few steps back’, ín respect to his writing, and get a copy of In Pursuit of Purpose, a text that he published in the early 1990s. I am pleased that I finally have it; it is a challenging book. In it, Dr. Munroe speaks of ‘purpose’ as being the key to personal fulfilment in life. If we do not have a clear understanding and appreciation of all our abilities and strengths, we may never be able to use them to

complement our everyday life, be it at home, work, school and within society. We all seek some form of self-actualisation or discovery; this is a constant journey. The book challenges you to always be in pursuit of the bigger picture, idea, purpose.

What are some of the habits you have picked from your day-to-day reading?When you read of how those individuals that we celebrate now got to achieve what they did – for example, Thomas Edison and the 1,000 times he tried and failed but did not tire and eventually invented the light bulb – you are challenged to change your mindset. I believe that there is always a way out of all challenges; you just need to have the commitment and discipline to resolve the issues at hand.

What book has left an indelible impression on you?The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Military strategy clearly has its place in the corporate setup and in everyday life.

What book are you looking forward to reading?Hillary Clinton’s What Happened is top of my list for 2017 publications; I look forward to getting a copy soon.

Murugi Ndwiga is the Sub Editor Management Magazine.




Smart home gadgets

Catolet Smart Automatic Litter BoxThe litter box is designed for both cats as well as small dogs, it ensures your furry pet always has a clean place to do its business. The Catolet is highly intelligent and requires no filler or cleaning. Instead, it features a conveyor system in order to dispose of waste. This automatic process washes the conveyor belt as soon as your pet leaves.

Lifestyle

Ring Security Floodlight CameraThe Ring Security Floodlight Camera deters criminals and monitors your home. Using a built-in motion sensor and a 270-degree field of vision, this deterring system will keep any threats away. If movement is detected, the two extremely bright LED lamps will light up. Additionally, the 1080p HD camera will begin recording to give you a live view of the action. Finally, an incredibly loud 100db siren is sure to drive anyone away. In addition, the Ring Floodlight connects to your home’s Wi-Fi network.

Wiscloud Smart Home SystemGet true control over everything in your home with the Wiscloud Smart Home System. The Wiscloud is a cloud-based server and bridges the gap between you and your electronics. With its own proprietary network, you can either manually control or use AI for just about anything. This includes your smart home systems as well as alarms,

lights, or even temperature and humidity. The Nebula Mesh Network communication is safe and reliable which doesn’t require internet or Wi-Fi. Incredibly, the Wisbox Mini can actually connect to thousands of devices as well as reach up to 30 rooms. This covers multiple floors.

Nucleus – Touchscreen Tablet Intercom for AlexaNucleus is the keystone to your smart home and enables you to communicate across the house with ease and convenience. Working as your virtual assistant, you can use the Nucleus Tablet to instruct Alexa to add items to your calendar or grocery list, play music, and even recite this week’s weather forecast. Nucleus is connected so it can be used to video call with others in your house as well as other households that have a Nucleus Tablet as well. It even has iOS and Android apps so you can continue to use the tablet while you’re out much like you would a baby or security monitor.



Travel

Eight places to visit in Kenya in 2018



Travel

Year.

1. Diani Beach. When I told someone previously that I had never been to Diani, she

looked at me as if I had dropped from another planet. “The water is so blue, the beaches are clean and the sand is pure white; you can’t compare with these North Coast beaches,” she said. Spare a day for a trip to Wasini Island for some snorkeling and to swim with the dolphins. Or ride further in to the Kisite Marine Park. Your little ones will not forget that experience. If you’ve already been there done that, it’s time to venture north to Malindi and finally Lamu to call yourself a seasoned connoisseur of Destination Kenya.

2. Takawiri Island. This has been called the most beautiful island on Lake Victoria be-

cause of its white sandy beach, palm trees, turquoise water and unspoilt serenity away from everything you know.

3. Kakamega Forest. Majestic nature, small details amplified, the only remaining tropical

rainforest in Kenya, abundant and unique birdlife, home to 40 per cent of the total butterfly population in Kenya, delicious kuku kienyeji at Rondo Retreat, over 60 species of orchids… you need more reasons to visit Kach?

4. Masai Mara. Because it is weird that people world over will save for a lifetime to come

to the Mara to see our wildebeests yet you who lives 200km away has never been to a game park.

5. Mt. Kenya, being the second largest mountain in Africa, makes for a challenging but

still life-transforming experience.

6. Kerio Valley through Iten. The drive up the highlands is sweat inducing yet full of

fascination for a first timer. It’s a breathtaking drive and you can make it more breathtaking by paragliding down the escarpment or getting a hotel room overlooking the valley where you are sure to catch a glimpse of a wonderful sunrise. But any time of day, sitting on a rock staring at the vastness below will sing music to the quiet child in you.

7. Samburu. The majestic north is rugged, wild and unspoilt. Prepare for jaw-dropping

landscapes stretching to eternity as you enjoy some top of the range accommodation in luxury camps. If you want to play it safe go run in the wild at Lewa for a good cause, visit Ol Pejeta for a chance to see the only living northern white rhinos in the world - Najin, Fatu and Sudan - before they go extinct and enjoy the sky walkway and natural plunge pools in Ngare Ndare Forest.

8. Lake Turkana. Leave the beaten path and walk into pre-history, a possible home

of pre-modern man. This is one of Kenya’s six World Heritage Sites and there’s record of the existence tools as old as 2.3 million years old from here. Meet communities whose lives are largely unmarred by moderni-ty including the almost extinct El Molo. Understand the other side of Kenya after driving through through Suguta Valley and the forgotten roads north of Kapenguria. You can time your visit to the Lake Turkana Festival to enjoy local culture and food.


Kageni Muse is the Sub editor Management Magazine.

2018 is the year to visit a few places in Kenya, first because Kenya is a beautiful country and you need to enjoy all this beauty; it shouldn’t just be for tourists from China and the UK. Secondly, travelling

around and mixing with other people may help us to better appreciate all the roles that we play to make this a great republic and why we all need each other.Lastly, they say that you are happier spending your money on experiences rather than on things. Here are eight places you should visit in the New

Mt Kenya, being the second largest mountain in Africa, makes for a challenging but still life-transforming experience.”

BY KAGENI MUSE



Office Diary

BY MURUGI NDWIGA

Surprise! Who’s the boss now…

The good thing with seasons is that they come and pass. The year 2017 seems to have been an elections year. Beginning of 2017, after a sur-

prise win, saw the United States and the world witness Donald Trump’s assumption of power and what the 45th President of the ‘Free world’ would bring to the table.

Later in April and early May, France elected its President, Emman-uel Macron. Macron, 39 years, is the youngest President in the history of France. Closer home, after a consti-tutional referendum in Rwanda on 18 December 2015, the amendments to the constitution allowed President Paul Kagame to run for a third term in office in 2017. With the Presi-dential elections held on 4 August 2017, Kagame was re-elected to a third seven-year term with 98.79 per cent of the vote. The changes in the

constitution also meant that Kagame could stand for two more terms after his current term is over, meaning he could be in power until 2034. In Kenya, many were the surprising moments that took centre stage. This time round, it was not ‘business as usual’ as with other elections.

The Supreme court nullified the country’s presidential elections held on August 8, with an order to The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to hold a fresh poll within 60 days. The country made history as one of the countries to nullify its election- other countries being Maldives, Ukraine and Austria. The set date for the fresh poll was on October 26. Then Robert Mugabe stepped down. Who would have thought?

It was such a surprise from the man who swore that “only God” would remove him from office. Mugabe was synonymous to Zim-babwe and brought independence to the country- he ruled for 37 years. His legacy will either be that of a

hero or a villain, in his country and the world at large. His term also came to an inglorious end, like that of former president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, who left office after 22 years. Jammeh, like Mugabe, in an interview with BBC in 2011 said, “I will deliver to the Gambian peo-ple and if I have to rule this country for one billion years, I will, if Allah says so.” Well, seems like Allah/God had had it as well! Some of the elections’ outcome brought out the surprise element, some brought out fools of political forecasters with ‘too close to call’ maneuvers of the politi-cal game, with political and ethnicity divisions being palpable. Despite the differences and outcomes experi-enced, Countries have to trudge on and witness political showdown every so often. Besides, Politics rules the world.

Murugi Ndwiga is the Sub Editor Management Magazine.


NAIROBITERMINUS

NAIROBITERMINUS

Inter-county Train

Inter-county Train

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BUILDING A STRONG BUSINESS - mabati.com · BUILDING A STRONG BUSINESS A look at Africa’s leadership crisis PAGE 50. At Beta Healthcare, we are fully committed to making a positive