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Thursday 10th of August 2017 |
Morning, Africa |
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If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 0930-1500 KENYA TIME Normal Board - The Whole shebang Prompt Board Next day settlement Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site http://www.rich.co.ke |
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Mark Rothko, Ochre And Red On Red, 1962 Africa |
Its so comforting to have the Older Girls at home. They have both spent their first year at University and without doubt are more mature. Hannah who adores her older Sisters is of course trailing them everywhere. They, of course, do ask some difficult questions like
''Dad Do You have a Plan if things go pear-shaped?''
And I said ''Look Darling, it won't.''
A Lot of Folks are out of town and its been a joy speeding through this City
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock BY T. S. ELIOT Africa |
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin — (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
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President Trump is said to receive a folder of positive news articles about himself twice a day @thetimes Law & Politics |
It has become a global ritual: you wake up each morning and grab your phone to catch up on the latest episode of The Trump Show, the addictive reality TV series. Which character has been humiliated, investigated or sacked? This has been the most distracting political year of my lifetime, and potentially the most dangerous. It’s not only Trump’s fault. After all, we are the viewers.
People in reality TV admire Trump as an astute professional. In 2015, after US TV audiences began to fall, he jumped to politics and put on a new show. This is not a metaphor: he still thinks like a reality performer. Reality TV perches between fiction and non-fiction, which is the spot where Trump feels happiest. Reality shows have scripted plots or formats, but partially real characters. Trump, several of whose companies have been bankrupted, played a successful businessman on TV, and so viewers could imagine him playing one in the White House.
Season one of Trump’s political show was the presidential campaign. It used the standard industry format known as “reality competition” (kicking the other contestants off the island), only with bigger stakes (the presidency) and A-list celebrities (who rarely consent to appear on reality TV).
In season two, Trump is improvising a new format. It largely dispenses with boring political characters, especially now that Congress probably won’t pass any major bills. Instead, the cast consists of Trump’s relatives (who can’t be kicked out of Trumpworld) and his posse (who can). The relatives were born into the show so they understand Trump has to be the star, but some posse members fail to grasp what genre they’re appearing in. John Kelly, for instance, imagines he is Trump’s chief of staff, whereas in fact he’s The Trump Show’s new Marine-general character.
But they are all dispensable characters. The ideal star of a reality series is an uninhibited narcissist who gradually reveals the inner reaches of his personality. As the reality TV producer Troy DeVolld explained in 2013: “That’s when celebrity casting works for me — when you actually get to see who somebody is, beneath who you thought they were when they came into it.”
The Trump Show is broadcast non-stop on both social media and TV, so its pace is unprecedented. Judged as entertainment, it’s vastly superior to the Barack Obama series. Whereas all other TV shows are now niche, this one appeals to all demographics. When Trump defenestrated his latest communications chief, I heard a nine-year-old excitedly shout: “Scaramucci’s fired!”
But they tend to misunderstand the conventions of the genre, and accuse Trump of lying when in fact he’s performing in a show. They also complain he doesn’t have a concentration span. Of course he doesn’t: in reality TV, if you spend a few minutes developing complexity, the audience switches off.
The broader problem is that we viewers — the smartphone generation raised in peacetime — have no concentration spans either. Trump is the fitting president for our era. No wonder that another merchant of distraction, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, thinks he can be president next.
Some liberals worry that Trump is distracting us in order to implement some master plan, such as bringing fascism to America. He isn’t. Trump doesn’t care about policy, though some people in Trumpworld do. He’s a lowbrow entertainer, so he produces lowbrow entertainment.
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Africa's voters are ready for democracy @FT Africa |
It is 7am and Jane Atiato, aged 74, is standing in the middle of a muddy field dressed in a purple bonnet and what looks like her best church outfit. The occasion? Her sixth time to vote in a presidential election since Kenya returned to multi-party democracy in 1992.
Whenever they are given the chance to participate, Kenyans in particular, and Africans in general, take elections in deadly earnest. Stories of people walking for miles to polling stations or standing in line for hours are clichés because they are true. In this election, Kenyans are deciding between two presidential candidates whose elite families have dominated post-independence politics for half a century — not much of a choice. Yet turnout could nudge 80 per cent. Asked if they intended to vote on Tuesday, Kenyans answered with variants on the following: “I must vote. It is both my duty and my right.”
African elections can be deeply moving. People treat democracy with a reverence that has long faded in the west. But there is a gap between people’s aspirations and the poor excuse for democracy that is too often dished up. People, it is said, get the government they deserve. In Africa, nothing could be further from the truth. Leaders, who are mostly in it for themselves, in no way deserve their electorates.
Africa’s leaders may not be ready for democracy. But its people certainly are.
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Zambia's President, Opposition Leader to Hold Talks, Mediator Says Africa |
Zambian President Edgar Lungu and jailed opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema have agreed to hold talks to resolve their political differences, a Commonwealth official said.
The discussions will be facilitated by the office of the Commonwealth, the intergovernmental organization’s secretary-general, Patricia Scotland, told reporters Wednesday in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.
Hichilema has been in prison for over 100 days on treason charges, and Lungu invoked emergency measures last month after a fire at the southern African country’s biggest market. The opposition leader has refused to accept Lungu as the winner of last year’s elections, which he claims were rigged.
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Rand Goes From Best Performer to Laggard as Zuma Wins Vote Africa |
The vote “can hardly be expected to be a ‘shocker’ for any market participant,” currency strategist Ulrich Leuchtmann wrote in a note to clients. Going forward, any policy mistakes “would have to be big to have any market impact – as everybody who currently holds long-ZAR positions should be prepared for some volatile political news flow,” he wrote.
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"Our system is secure," IEBC CEO @ezraCHILOBA rejects Nasa hacking claim. @FT Kenyan Economy |
Raila Odinga, Kenya’s opposition leader, has alleged that hackers infiltrated the electoral commission’s computer system to manipulate a presidential election after provisional results showed Uhuru Kenyatta on course for victory.
Mr Kenyatta, the incumbent, had secured 54.3 per cent of the vote after results from about 96 per cent of polling stations had been declared. Mr Odinga was on 44.8 per cent.
Mr Odinga, making his fourth bid for Kenya’s presidency, declared “an attack on democracy”, adding that his party’s internal results were “completely different” to the official tally.
“Some persons conspired and executed a scheme to deny Kenyans their democratic right to elect their leaders,” said Mr Odinga. “From the information in our possession, some person’s gained entry into the IEBC [electoral board] election management database and assumed the role of our collective sovereign.”
Ezra Chiloba, the commission’s chief executive officer, rejected Mr Odinga’s claim. “There was no external interference in the management system before, during or after the election,” he said on Wednesday evening. “Based on our own study we’re comfortable where we are.”
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Investors Too Busy Cheering @uKenyatta to Fret About Vote Spat via @BloombergQuint Kenyan Economy |
Euphoria over a President Uhuru Kenyatta win, even if the election results are preliminary, boosted the nation’s stocks by the most in Africa and sent Kenya’s dollar bonds higher. The FTSE NSE Kenya 25 Index of stocks advanced as much as 2.7 percent to the highest level in two years. The yield on the nation’s Eurobonds due 2024 fell the most since March and the shilling was little changed. With votes from more than 90 percent of polling stations counted, Kenyatta has so far secured 54.4 percent of the votes, while his main rival, Raila Odinga, has 44.7 percent, according to the Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission’s website. The opposition rejected the results, with Odinga insisting the system used to count votes had been hacked. “The markets are seeing this accusation of massive hacking as a red herring,” said Aly-Khan Satchu, who runs Nairobi-based Rich Management, an adviser to companies and wealthy individuals. “There is no smoking gun and hence the positive reaction. President Kenyatta and Kenya’s free market credentials are burnished by what was a very well-conducted election and I expect a serious upwards rerating at the stock exchange. The shilling will remain robust.” A Kenyatta win would soothe investors who fear a shift to more leftist economic policies under Odinga, Exotix Capital said in a note to clients. Odinga has said he’ll stamp out corruption in the world’s biggest exporter of black tea, while Kenyatta pledged to create 1.3 million jobs a year. Kenya is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s five largest economies and a regional hub for companies such as Google Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. Markets shouldn’t write off the chances of unrest in the coming days, according to Capital Economics Ltd. Accusations of fraud raise the risk of violence and riots, similar to when Odinga lost to then President Mwai Kibaki in 2007 and disputed the results. “While the opposition leader has appealed for calm, he has also explicitly denied responsibility for any actions undertaken by his supporters,” John Ashbourne, an Africa economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients. If riots start, Kenya’s tourism and agricultural exports would suffer, knocking about 3 percentage points off economic growth in the third quarter, he said. The shilling traded at 103.98 per dollar and the yield on the dollar bonds declined 18 basis points to 6.3 percent as of 7:33 p.m. in London. Kenyan stocks ended the trading day 1.4 percent higher.
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'China has conquered Kenya': Inside Beijing's new strategy to win African hearts and minds Kenyan Economy |
It took the StarTimes satellite TV salesman about 30 minutes to install a pipeline for Chinese propaganda into Francis Gitonga’s squat, cinder-block home here in southern Kenya, near Africa’s Great Rift Valley.
First, he climbed onto Gitonga’s roof, drilled a satellite dish onto the chimney, and dangled some wires through the door frame. He plugged it all into a StarTimes set-top box, and turned it on.
Gitonga, 43, flipped through the channels, and Chinese programs filled the screen: an old kung fu movie, a Chinese news broadcast, a Chinese documentary about Japan’s wartime atrocities, most dubbed into English.
In Kenya, memories of election horrors set an ominous tone for Tuesday's vote »
Gitonga was elated. His new digital TV package gave him better reception than he’d once thought possible in Kajiado, a small town on the savannah where Masai tribesmen wander past rickety storefronts and goats cluster in the shade.
“I didn't know about China before,” he said. “I can say it's good. They have changed this country in a big way, very fast.”
Although StarTimes — a privately owned, Beijing-based media and telecommunications firm — is virtually unknown in the West, it has been sweeping across Africa since 2002, overhauling the continent’s broadcast infrastructure and beaming Chinese content into millions of homes. It has subsidiaries in 30 African countries, including such war-torn states as the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
"Our aim is to enable every African household to afford digital TV, watch good digital TV and enjoy the digital life,” StarTimes Vice Chairman Guo Ziqi told China’s official New China News Agency in December.
But there’s a catch. StarTimes has substantial backing from the Chinese state — and an explicit political mandate.
China’s relationship with Africa — for decades defined by resource-for-infrastructure deals — is evolving, as Africa becomes wealthier and China’s foreign policy objectives grow more ambitious.
Beijing has invested billions of dollars into “soft power” campaigns aimed at convincing the world that China is a cultural and political success story. Yet beyond China’s borders, its heavily censored state media broadcasts go mostly unwatched; its newspapers go unread; and outsiders often continue to associate China with pollution, opacity and repression.
StarTimes signals a change in tack, one that highlights the depth and complexity of Beijing’s efforts to win hearts and minds — with much of that effort now being directed at Africa, one of the world’s great emerging media markets.
As a digital infrastructure provider, StarTimes is helping African states transition from analog television — a technology akin to FM radio, rife with snow, static and dropped signals — to digital, which ensures high-quality image and sound. As a pay-TV company, it is stacking its networks with pro-China broadcasts.
As both, it is materially improving the lives of countless Africans, then making China’s role in those improvements impossible to ignore.
“There’s a huge ideological element” to StarTimes’ African operations, said Dani Madrid-Morales, a doctoral fellow at the City University of Hong Kong who has researched the company. “It’s a huge effort to get Africans to understand China. Even the selection of TV shows is very carefully done. It’s very specific shows that showcase an urban China, a growing China, a noncontroversial view of China.”
Pang Xinxing, StarTimes’ chief executive, who could not be reached for comment, has told Chinese state media that he expanded to Africa to counter “exaggerated and biased reports” about China in the Western media.
“There’s a mindfulness among China’s leadership that China doesn’t get fair treatment overseas, and something needs to be done about it,” Madrid-Morales said.
StarTimes established its Kenyan subsidiary in 2012; now, it has 1.4 million subscribers, accounting for nearly half of Kenya’s pay-TV subscriptions. Its cheapest package, called “Novo,” costs about $4 per month. Novo features a mix of Kenyan and Chinese channels, including several belonging to the Chinese state-run broadcaster, the China Global Television Network, or CGTN.
Access to other international channels, such as Al Jazeera, France 24 and BBC — which are more inclined to portray China in a negative light — costs more than most Kenyans can afford.
In December 2016, StarTimes launched a “pilot program” in Kajiado “as part of its long-term agenda” to bring digital television to rural Kenyans, according to the state-run China Daily. The company gave free StarTimes set-top boxes and subscriptions to 120 households. Sun Zhijun, a Chinese vice minister overseeing propaganda and media censorship, traveled to Kajiado for the inaugural celebration.
By January, StarTimes was everywhere in town — bright orange StarTimes advertisements glowed on schoolhouse walls, and StarTimes satellite dishes sprouted like carnations from corrugated sheet-metal roofs.
The Kajiado project “is being subsidized by the Chinese government,” Mark Lisboa, StarTimes Kenya’s vice president of marketing, acknowledged, without giving an amount.
The company “embarked on a massive sales drive” following Kenya’s switch to digital TV infrastructure in 2014, he said; it now employs 1,100 people, most of them Kenyan. He added that StarTimes will begin building an Africa headquarters, a dubbing center and production facilities within the year.
China says it built a railway in Africa out of altruism, but it's more strategic than that »
“This is just the beginning, I’ll put it that way,” he said.
China’s footprint across Kenya spreads far beyond access to the airwaves. As in the rest of Africa, China has been investing heavily in infrastructure. But as China’s impact deepens, Kenyans have often reacted with suspicion. They blame China for stealing local jobs. They fear that China — Kenya’s largest creditor — is saddling the country with unmanageable debt, and that Chinese infrastructure projects are endangering the country’s pristine national parks, some of the world’s most biodiverse.
In late May, a Kenyan delegation signed a $2-billion deal with a Chinese firm for a 1,050-megawatt coal-fired power plant about 13 miles north of Lamu Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the oldest Swahili settlement in East Africa. Critics say the project could pollute the air, damage fishing grounds and push hundreds of residents off their land. Locals were outraged that the Chinese company, China Power Global, would import 40% of workers on the project from China.
Lamu residents have staged silent protests, marching through the town bearing anti-coal placards, and though the Kenya National Environment Management Authority signed off on the project last year, the plant’s fate remains undecided.
To get a sense of what’s at stake for China in Kenya, visit Nairobi National Park, a pristine nature preserve in the capital city’s shadow, where zebras graze against a backdrop of skyscrapers.
China provided most of the funding, in loans and investment, for a $3.8-billion railway joining Nairobi and the Kenyan port city Mombasa, 380 miles away — part of which will cut through the park. The line opened in June; its high concrete pillars rise like a mirage from the dry, yellow savannah.
The new train will travel at an average of 74 mph, cutting transportation time between the two cities from about 10 hours to five; it will transport 22 million tons of cargo per year. Ultimately, it could anchor a Chinese-backed rail network stretching into South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, where transportation networks are now rudimentary, consisting mainly of dilapidated roads and remote airstrips. Improved access to ports could improve trade and open markets.
But critics in Kenya say the railway is overpriced, costing a fifth of the national budget, and could put Kenya in debt for generations — 90% of the project was funded through loans from the Export-Import Bank of China, often known simply as China ExIm Bank.
Some of the deliberations with government officials over the project happened behind closed doors, drawing accusations of corruption — though no one has offered much beyond suspicion.
“In my opinion, the [rail] project is one of the biggest scandals ever witnessed in Kenya,” Kenyan politician Joshua Odongo Onono wrote in a commentary last year. “May God have mercy on us.”
Environmentalists have raised a loud alarm about the rail line’s effect on wildlife. The flurry of initial construction is thought to have led to the deaths of 10 elephants. Several lions escaped from the park — one of which died — and some have blamed that, too, on the construction activity, though that’s less clear.
Protesters gathered outside the Chinese Embassy in Nairobi, chanting, “ExIm China, respect our laws!”
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Paula Kahumbu, the Nairobi-based CEO of the conservationist organization WildlifeDirect. “We’re concerned that if they can get away with this in the capital city, God knows what could happen elsewhere.”
The controversies were barely reported by Chinese news outlets in Kenya.
Those reports have tended to focus on the rail line’s efficiency, economic benefits and ambition. “The line is expected to speed up the transformation of the Eastern African region as a whole,” reported CGTN in September.
Kevin Otiende, a former employee in CGTN’s Nairobi bureau, said that its Kenyan journalists had little say over what ultimately went on air. “I felt personally, there was no freedom of expression,” he said. “Everything had to be nice. And anything that was not perceived to be correct was immediately killed.”
Chinese business advocates paint Beijing’s media investments as a win-win for Chinese investors and African consumers — and an important prerequisite to China’s ongoing ambitions on the continent.
Huang Hongxiang, the Nairobi-based founder of China House Kenya, which provides consulting services to Chinese companies in the country, said that if China does not take steps to improve its image in Africa, “there will be conflicts sooner or later resulting from misunderstandings.”
“Why would China want to do the railway? Of course it's because it's beneficial to China’s economy and Chinese companies, and to China-Africa relations,” he said. “Between China and Africa you have a lot of material exchange — the railway, and so on. But people-to-people exchange really isn't enough.”
How much impact China is achieving through its media investments remains unclear. Experts questioned whether Kenya’s StarTimes subscribers, while benefiting from StarTimes’ signal quality, were actually watching Chinese shows.
Linus Kaikai, chairman of the Kenya Editors Guild and a manager at the Nairobi-based National Media Group, said Kenyan audiences have been shifting away from foreign content for years, as local shows grow more popular. To most Kenyans, he added, Chinese culture carries little cachet.
“Kenyans have been separating and placing — if I can put it this way — a Chinese wall between infrastructure and culture,” he said. “Kenyans don’t see [China] as a model in the space of democratic or political processes. But they see it as a very, very good model when it comes to economic growth.”
David Mwangi, owner of a small shop in Kajiado, said he has learned to appreciate Chinese news reports. “BBC is shallow. But [CGTN] has more, a lot of African stuff,” he said. “I thought China was a small country, but now I know it's a big country with a lot of technology and infrastructure.
“China is improving a lot,” he continued, glancing at his television. He paused, briefly.
“China has conquered Kenya,” he said.
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N.S.E Today |
The synchronised Press Conference where the AU's Thabo Mbeki, The Commonwealth's John Mahama, The EU and John Kerry all affirmed the integrity of the Election essentially means that any strategy of tension is punctured and President Kenyatta will be officially inaugurated in very short order. “The markets are seeing this accusation of massive hacking as a red herring,” said Aly-Khan Satchu, who runs Nairobi-based Rich Management [I told Bloomberg Quint] “There is no smoking gun and hence the positive reaction. President Kenyatta and Kenya’s free market credentials are burnished by what was a very well-conducted election and I expect a serious upwards rerating at the stock exchange. The shilling will remain robust.” A Kenyatta win would soothe investors who fear a shift to more leftist economic policies under Odinga, Exotix Capital said in a note to clients. I had told the Wall Street Journal “From an economic perspective, this is a pivot election...it could produce a very bifurcated outcome.” “There is a tsunami of money that would flood into Kenya if this election can be pulled off well” I told the Wall Street Journal. The shilling traded at 103.895 per dollar last and the yield on the dollar bonds declined a a massive 18 basis points to 6.3 percent yesterday. The Nairobi All Share ramped +1.37% higher [making that a +2.46% rally over 2 sessions] to close at a 26 month high. The Nairobi NSE20 Index rallied +53.16 points and +1.38% to close at 3903.29 a 15 month high. Equity Turnover clocked 207.241m which is light trading.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom rallied +2.105% to regain an all time high of 24.25 previously reached 27th through 31st July. Safaricom has short term upside to 28.00. The E-Commerce Platform is set to be a Big Game-Changer.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Barclays Bank rallied +3.517% to close at 10.30 and above 10.00 for the first time this Year. Barclays Bank has served up a +24.175% Total Return in 2017. Standard Chartered rallied +2.25% to close at 227.00. Housing Finance rallied +6.48% to close at 11.50. Housing Finance remains -17.85% in 2017.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
KenGen rallied +4.67% to close at 8.95 which matches a 2017 closing high from June this Year. KenGen is now +54.31% in 2017 and has been on a tear since the Rights Issue and the arrival of PIC SA on the register. There is more to go. KPLC surged +6.145% to close at 9.50 which is a 2017 high. KPLC is +16.56% in 2017 and on a PE of less than 3 has headroom.
EABL firmed 2 shillings to close at 267.00 and traded 50,600 shares. --
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