Nairobi 31st October 2019 Kenya Film Commission has today unveiled the nominees for the 9th
edition of Kalasha Film and TV Awards at IMAX 20th Century Cinema. Kalasha Awards is an
annual event by the Commission that celebrates exceptional talent in Film and TV industry in
Kenya. The call for submission that ended on 20th October 2019 attracted 959 entries in the 34
categories that were up for competition.
An eight member nomination academy drawn from film industry associations, academics and
industry professionals was tasked to select, scrutinize and nominate films for the Kalasha
International TV and Film Awards 2019. The judging period kicked off from 22nd to 26th October
2019. This year, saw emergence of two new categories; Best TV Reality and Best Student
Short Film.
This year’s Jury comprised; Linda Karuru – a leading producer, with over 15 years of
experience in the TV & film industry, Fred Makori – a media professional with more than 10
years’ experience in TV & Film production, Dr. Racheal Diang’a – assistant Professor of Film at
the USIU and the Chair of Cinematic Arts Department, Irene Mukonyoro – a producer with 15
years’ experience in TV Production, Kang’ethe Mungai – a film producer, director and script
writer, Irene Kariuki – an experienced Film and Television Actress and a renowned Radio Voice
over Artist with a career that has spanned 25 years, Dennis Mbuthia – a game designer and
animator with over 8 years industry experience andDr. Simon Peter – a scholar in performing
arts and film studies from the University of Leeds, UK and a film coordinator at the Kenya
National Drama and Film committee.
The nominees’ unveil ceremony marks the launch of the public voting process which is now
open setting the stage for the main award gala on Saturday 30th November 2019. The nominated
films will be subjected to public voting which will constitute 30 per cent while the nomination
academy’s vote will constitute 70 per cent of the total tally. The Commission has identified
StarTimes ON, an online mobile application, as a strategic platform where the shortlisted films
will be uploaded for viewing and public voting from 30th October to 30th November ahead of the
9th edition of Kalasha TV and Film Awards.
Month: October 2019
Motorcycle Trader Charged with 698 million Tax Fraud
Nairobi, 30th October 2019 Six directors of a company dealing in the lucrative motorcycles (boda boda) trade
within Marsabit County have been arrested for tax evasion related frauds amounting
to KShs 698 million.
Ali Ibrahim Dida, Hassannoor Adan Ali, Kose Isatu Hirbo, Ibrahim Worku Hirbo,
Wako Bate Hirbo, Abdullahi Mamo Jillo, all directors of Northern Auto Dealers
Limited were arrested after they failed to declare income earned for the period
between the years 2016-2019 from the returns filed on behalf of the company.
The company is dealing in buying and selling of motor cycles within Moyale Town
and despite making sales amounting to Kshs 3,420,942,711 between 2016 and 2019,
the business failed to declare the income earned nor pay the requisite taxes for both
VAT and Corporation Tax.
Failure to declare taxable income is a tax fraud under section 97 (a) as read with section
104 (3) of the Tax Procedures Act. The suspects are currently held at the Nyeri Police
Station and will be charged at the Nyeri Law Courts on 31st October 2019.
If convicted, the accused will be liable to a fine not exceeding KShs 10 million or
double the tax evaded whichever is higher or to imprisonment for a term not
exceeding ten (10) years, or both.
Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has aggressively embarked on eliminating tax
evasion in the country which has led to several arrests and prosecutions that have
resulted to unearthing of over KShs60 billion worth of taxes evaded which KRA is in
the process of recovering.
Taxpayers are encouraged to pay their taxes in time and remain compliant with tax
laws in order to avoid punitive enforcement measures including prosecution.
Contractors Charged For Kshs 35.7 million Tax fraud
Nairobi, 30th October 2019 Two contractors were this morning charged before the Milimani Court Chief
Magistrate Hon. Kennedy Cheruiyot with several counts of tax evasion amounting to
KShs 35.7 million.
The two contractors; Yussuf Khalif Bulle and Abdirahim Osman Yarrow, both
directors of El-Yumo Contractors Limited, jointly faced eleven counts which involve
failure to pay taxes, falsifying accounts statements to reduce tax liability and failure
to file tax returns all happening between 2014 and 2018.
The accused, in their statements, deliberately failed to declare taxable income by
filing nil returns and also failed to declare the correct amounts of taxable income to
reduce Value Added Tax (VAT) liability for various years of income.
The two had been awarded contracts by the Judiciary and Kenya Urban Road
Authority to construct Mandera Law Courts and routine maintenance of lot 5Y roads
in Dandora and Kariobangi area respectively.
Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has aggressively embarked on eliminating tax
evasion in the country. This has led to several arrests and prosecutions that have
resulted to unearthing of over KShs60 billion worth of taxes evaded which KRA is in
the process of recovering. Some of the tax evasion cases include those of failure by
taxpayers to pay duty, fraud in relation to tax, failure to submit tax returns by due
date amongst others.
Buying a Used Car? Here is Safest Dealerships
Nairobi, Kenya October 30th 2019
Kenyans have voted for car dealerships in Kenya as the best place to buy used cars. According the the inaugural Cheki Car Awards. GG Motors and Motor Hub are your safest used car buying heavens.
Cars That Will Make You Get Laid in Kenya
Nairobi, Kenya 30th October
The best high performance vehicles as voted by Kenyans on the inaugural cheki car awards include the Subaru Impreza STI a
The Subaru Impreza STI. images courtesy cheki.co.ke
The Nissan GTR. images Courtesy of Google
nd the Nissan GTR
Best Family Car
Nairobi, Kenya October 30th 2019
Most Kenyan drivers or to be drivers consider two vehicles as very functional and suited to the needs of a family. The Toyota Alpha and the Toyota Vangaurd. The awards are courtesy of cheki.co.ke
The Toyota Alphard 350 V6. Images courtesy wikipedia
The Toyota Vanguard. images courtesy carlist.my
Cars Most Kenyans Can Afford
Nairobi 30th October 2019
According to the inaugural Car Award organised early yesterday at a Nairobi Hotel by Online Car Selling Website cheki.co.ke. Kenyan drivers voted for two models as budget friendly.
Mazda Demio. images courtesy encuentra24.com
The Toyota Vitz. Images Courtesy olx
Magufuli Chases Away Asylum Seekers
(Nairobi, October 29, 2019)
Tanzanian authorities unlawfully coerced more than 200 unregistered asylum seekers into returning to Burundi on October 15, 2019 by threatening to withhold their legal status in Tanzania, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) facilitated the returns by registering the asylum seekers under its voluntarily repatriation program, despite threats from Tanzanian officials that they could risk arrest if they stayed in Tanzania.
The forced returns follow an August 24 agreement between Tanzania and Burundi that says about 180,000 Burundian refugees in Tanzania “are to return to their country of origin whether voluntarily or not” by December 31. On October 11, Tanzanian President John Magufuli said that Burundian refugees should “go home.” The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should press Tanzania not to forcibly return asylum seekers or refugees, and UNHCR should not facilitate such returns.
“The Tanzanian authorities have intensified pressure on unregistered Burundian refugees to the point of coercion, violating their rights under international law,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Tanzania appears to be acting on its threat to drive out some 180,000 refugees who are at risk of serious harm in Burundi.”
In March 2018, Tanzania and Burundi agreed to repatriate 2,000 Burundians a week under a 2017 tripartite agreement with UNHCR to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of Burundian refugees. However, the actual rate has been far lower, with only 76,000 returning between September 2017 and September 2019, an average of about 730 a week.
Between July and September, UNHCR and Tanzanian authorities conducted a “validation exercise” to verify the number of registered and unregistered Burundians living in camps in Tanzania. Many unregistered Burundians have encountered obstacles to registration, two sources independently told Human Rights Watch. While the authorities have yet to publish the findings of the exercise, about 3,000 unregistered Burundians were identified, one of the sources said.
On October 11, 2019, camp authorities under the Tanzanian Home Affairs Ministry informed hundreds of unregistered Burundians living in at least one of three camps – Nduta, Nyarugusu, and Mtendeli – in Tanzania’s northwestern Kigoma region near the Burundi border that if they did not register for return they would be in the camps without legal status and could risk arrest, one source said. Those without legal status would receive some food assistance but no other support. Many registered immediately.
The forced return of over 200 people on October 15 comes against a backdrop of increasing pressure on all refugees living in the camps to return to Burundi, Human Rights Watch said. Since August, Tanzanian officials have made threatening public statements, closed down a market, and repeatedly changed administrative requirements for aid organizations operating in the camps. A recent agreement between the Burundian and Tanzanian police to allow cross-border operations by both police forces has heightened fears of arrest among refugees, local media reported.
On October 12, between 200 and 300 unregistered Burundians approached UNHCR officials in Nduta camp to sign up for voluntary repatriation, according to the two sources. The UNHCR officials only asked each person whether they wanted to return, but not other questions normally asked, including why they had decided to return, one source said. On October 15, they were among 812 Burundians whose repatriation was facilitated by the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration (IOM).
UNHCR, in response to Human Rights Watch findings provided on October 23, acknowledged that “refugees were added to the convoy on October 15 through government mobilization efforts” but that “it took issue with the suggestion that all [of them] were coerced.”
UNHCR disputed the Human Rights Watch allegation that UNHCR officials did not ask the Burundians registering to return further questions to determine whether their decision was genuinely voluntary. “In explaining their decision to return,” UNHCR said, “refugees referred to a variety of push and pull factors, as they weigh up the known challenging environments in both Burundi and in Tanzania,” and added that “no refugee stated that they were being forced back to Burundi.”
Under UNHCR guidelines, refugees and asylum seekers do not need to state explicitly that they are being forced back for UNHCR to conclude that their repatriation is involuntary, Human Rights Watch said. UNHCR should have fully taken into consideration that more than 200 asylum seekers asked to return to Burundi the day after camp authorities had threatened them with arrest if they did not “voluntarily return.” UNHCR did not appear to have done so.
UNHCR acknowledged “the increased amount of pressure being put on both refugees and our staff to increase the numbers of people returning each week,” but said that it “will continue to work with the government of Tanzania to seek adherence to principles of voluntariness in line with the tripartite agreement.”
The Tanzanian government’s actions have compounded an already deteriorating situation in the camps which increasingly risks coercing refugees into returning to Burundi, Human Rights Watch said. These include cuts in food rations between August 2017 and October 2018, a ban on refugees leaving the camps including to find work or firewood, and violence against some refugees who left the camps, as well as generalised insecurity. The Imbonerakure, the Burundian ruling party’s youth league, which has a long record of widespread human rights abuses, has reportedly harassed and threatened refugees in the camps.
Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the Tanzanian authorities’ successful coercion of over 200 unregistered Burundians on October 15 might lead the authorities to target more such people.
“Tanzania’s intimidation of unregistered Burundians in the camps appears to be just the first step in targeting the most vulnerable people in the camps,” Frelick said. “All international entities, including UNHCR, need to play a stronger role to protect and assist all Burundians seeking refuge in Tanzania.”
(Nairobi, October 29, 2019) – Tanzanian authorities unlawfully coerced more than 200 unregistered asylum seekers into returning to Burundi on October 15, 2019 by threatening to withhold their legal status in Tanzania, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) facilitated the returns by registering the asylum seekers under its voluntarily repatriation program, despite threats from Tanzanian officials that they could risk arrest if they stayed in Tanzania.
The forced returns follow an August 24 agreement between Tanzania and Burundi that says about 180,000 Burundian refugees in Tanzania “are to return to their country of origin whether voluntarily or not” by December 31. On October 11, Tanzanian President John Magufuli said that Burundian refugees should “go home.” The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should press Tanzania not to forcibly return asylum seekers or refugees, and UNHCR should not facilitate such returns.
“The Tanzanian authorities have intensified pressure on unregistered Burundian refugees to the point of coercion, violating their rights under international law,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Tanzania appears to be acting on its threat to drive out some 180,000 refugees who are at risk of serious harm in Burundi.”
In March 2018, Tanzania and Burundi agreed to repatriate 2,000 Burundians a week under a 2017 tripartite agreement with UNHCR to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of Burundian refugees. However, the actual rate has been far lower, with only 76,000 returning between September 2017 and September 2019, an average of about 730 a week.
Between July and September, UNHCR and Tanzanian authorities conducted a “validation exercise” to verify the number of registered and unregistered Burundians living in camps in Tanzania. Many unregistered Burundians have encountered obstacles to registration, two sources independently told Human Rights Watch. While the authorities have yet to publish the findings of the exercise, about 3,000 unregistered Burundians were identified, one of the sources said.
On October 11, 2019, camp authorities under the Tanzanian Home Affairs Ministry informed hundreds of unregistered Burundians living in at least one of three camps – Nduta, Nyarugusu, and Mtendeli – in Tanzania’s northwestern Kigoma region near the Burundi border that if they did not register for return they would be in the camps without legal status and could risk arrest, one source said. Those without legal status would receive some food assistance but no other support. Many registered immediately.
The forced return of over 200 people on October 15 comes against a backdrop of increasing pressure on all refugees living in the camps to return to Burundi, Human Rights Watch said. Since August, Tanzanian officials have made threatening public statements, closed down a market, and repeatedly changed administrative requirements for aid organizations operating in the camps. A recent agreement between the Burundian and Tanzanian police to allow cross-border operations by both police forces has heightened fears of arrest among refugees, local media reported.
On October 12, between 200 and 300 unregistered Burundians approached UNHCR officials in Nduta camp to sign up for voluntary repatriation, according to the two sources. The UNHCR officials only asked each person whether they wanted to return, but not other questions normally asked, including why they had decided to return, one source said. On October 15, they were among 812 Burundians whose repatriation was facilitated by the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration (IOM).
UNHCR, in response to Human Rights Watch findings provided on October 23, acknowledged that “refugees were added to the convoy on October 15 through government mobilization efforts” but that “it took issue with the suggestion that all [of them] were coerced.”
UNHCR disputed the Human Rights Watch allegation that UNHCR officials did not ask the Burundians registering to return further questions to determine whether their decision was genuinely voluntary. “In explaining their decision to return,” UNHCR said, “refugees referred to a variety of push and pull factors, as they weigh up the known challenging environments in both Burundi and in Tanzania,” and added that “no refugee stated that they were being forced back to Burundi.”
Under UNHCR guidelines, refugees and asylum seekers do not need to state explicitly that they are being forced back for UNHCR to conclude that their repatriation is involuntary, Human Rights Watch said. UNHCR should have fully taken into consideration that more than 200 asylum seekers asked to return to Burundi the day after camp authorities had threatened them with arrest if they did not “voluntarily return.” UNHCR did not appear to have done so.
UNHCR acknowledged “the increased amount of pressure being put on both refugees and our staff to increase the numbers of people returning each week,” but said that it “will continue to work with the government of Tanzania to seek adherence to principles of voluntariness in line with the tripartite agreement.”
The Tanzanian government’s actions have compounded an already deteriorating situation in the camps which increasingly risks coercing refugees into returning to Burundi, Human Rights Watch said. These include cuts in food rations between August 2017 and October 2018, a ban on refugees leaving the camps including to find work or firewood, and violence against some refugees who left the camps, as well as generalised insecurity. The Imbonerakure, the Burundian ruling party’s youth league, which has a long record of widespread human rights abuses, has reportedly harassed and threatened refugees in the camps.
Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the Tanzanian authorities’ successful coercion of over 200 unregistered Burundians on October 15 might lead the authorities to target more such people.
“Tanzania’s intimidation of unregistered Burundians in the camps appears to be just the first step in targeting the most vulnerable people in the camps,” Frelick said. “All international entities, including UNHCR, need to play a stronger role to protect and assist all Burundians seeking refuge in Tanzania.”
KWAL and Utalii Partner In Graduation of 40 Slum Kids
Nairobi, Kenya 28th October 2019
Part of the Students who Graduated at the Ceremony. Images Courtesy of The Kenya Utalii College.
The inaugural students of a two week training programme courtesy of The Kenya Wine Agency Limited KWAL and The Kenya Utalii College graduated in a lavish ceremony at the college grounds late last week.
The CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) programme by the Kenya Wine Agency meant to uplift the lives of over forty individuals from the Mukuru Kwa Ngenja Slum, an informal settlement in the Capital City of Kenya, Nairobi where the company is based) is meant to train the individuals in the handling and serving of wine.
Speaking during the Ceremony Principal by and CEO of the College Mr Hashim Mohammed said; “..the programme is meant to leverage to the needs of need of various consumers of wine around the Country and will be tailor made to the needs of companies involved in sale distribution and handling of wine a critical component of any institution in enhancing customer service ”
The graduands will be absorbed in the alchohol subsector which currently employs 250,000 people directly and indirectly.
Technological disruption looming for Africa’s data network market
Opinion Editorial.
Nairobi 26th October 2019
Sometimes a disruptive technology can loiter for a while, before it changes everything. Yet
change it will bring, because nothing and no one can defy gravity. So it is, I believe, with the
new generation of open compute infrastructure.
For, as the world creates data, there’s an equal demand for resources to store, process and
make sense from this data to drive business value.
All the thousands of ledgers that used to be created manually now generate legions of data
threads, expanded by ever more automation and cross-relationships, driving further data and
data processes. Our data revolution has created new data flows, again, from our
communication, seeing global hyperscale companies create hundreds of thousands of square
metres of data centres to hold and process their millions of users’ data.
These data centres need power to run the servers, cooling systems and security systems,
maintain an optimal ambient temperature, and keep the air dust-free. And this power has been
creating a galloping electricity bill in recent years, to such an extent that hyperscalers started
investing in R&D to design more energy efficient computing infrastructure.
Two years of design engineering gave birth to the Open Compute Project (OCP), a radical and
bold move by leading hyperscalers to create non-proprietary data centre hardware that
achieved a significant milestone in energy efficiency and reduced total cost of ownership. This
move has been well received by other players in the technology innovation space, with leading
chip and switch makers joining OCP. More than 1,000 globally leading hardware engineers have
since contributed to and continue to make improvements to these free, state-of-the-art
blueprints for data centre infrastructure.
And thus, in one step, hardware has been added to the open source revolution that brought the
world software from Joomla to Sugar and Linux to Steam as ever-expanding communities of
technical contributors.
The chase could not be more timely, with OCP evolving just as cloud computing has been
moving into a new gear. The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market has been rising for the last 20
years, beginning with customer relationship management services, and steadily claiming ever
more software space, from mailing lists to payroll, book-keeping to word processing.
With each new SaaS offering, the cloud grows bigger, and the need for data centres greater.
Yet as a next wave of disruptive technology, OCP has barely appeared on the radar.
Using OCP equipment, versus the kit available from the world’s top brand names, has thus far
demonstrated a significant reduction in the total cost of ownership and maintenance of data
centre infrastructure. We have been able to register savings of over 40 per cent in
implementation as well as licensing costs.
Now that’s a big enough difference to change equations everywhere, but for companies like
ours, working to effect a technology revolution in Africa, that’s akin to a beacon in the dark. The
costs of equipping data centres have almost been halved, putting these centres within the
reach of many small and medium sized businesses, as well as offering our nations’ largest
companies and government, an opportunity to significantly reduce their operating expenditures
attributed to data centre maintenance.
At my own company, we have seized this opportunity, becoming the first Cloud services
provider in Africa to introduce OCP hardware at the East Africa Data Centre, one of the largest
data centres in the continent which has been set up in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
This OCP infrastructure is currently the backbone of our innovative SaaS solutions which
includes iLearn, a learning management system for state primary schools that has been
designed, developed and tested in collaboration with professional Kenyan teachers, with the
digital learning content vetted and approved by the government. This interactive learner
centred platform can be accessed by teachers and pupils from any part of the country through
a smartphone, tablet or laptop, thereby proliferating digital literacy in the country.
We are also using this OCP infrastructure to power our private, public and hybrid cloud services.
Thus, by using data centre infrastructure that is cost efficient all the time as our foundation, we
have created an entire pyramid of more accessible and locally relevant services and software
for our African clients.
In short, from the Open Compute Project we have initiated a programme to open computing
services to businesses throughout Africa, encompassing organisations that could never have
stepped so quickly or so lightly into the cloud were it’s still on offer only at more than double
the price.
We believe that the capacity for OCP to play its part in bridging the digital divide has been
remarkably overlooked until now.
But we also see this technology as a disruptor that the hardware industry and the global cloud
services providers have barely understood, as yet. For, with hundreds of our finest hardware
engineers engaged in constantly upgrading OCP designs, and the resulting infrastructure out-
competing proprietary infrastructure at a fraction of the price, it can only be so long before
data centres make OCP the global standard, forcing proprietary brands to reassess their unique
selling points.
For Africa, the move to OCP and the opening of the cloud to hundreds of thousands of
companies and millions of citizens, cannot come soon enough. That’s why we have made it
begin. OCP is no doubt the future in data centre infrastructure, just as SaaS became the present
in software.
By Toney Webala, Co-Founder and CTO at Atlancis Technologies
The whistling African 
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