Reprieve for depositors as insurer launches Sh140m plan to halt bank failures

 By Samwel Doe
@samweldoe
Kenya deposits Insurance Corporation (KDIC) unveiled ambitious plan of leveraging on ICT to help them in monitoring and tracking banking and deposit taking institutions crisis and help them come up with proper intervention mechanisms to help banks mitigate on likelihoods of depositors loss.

The Banking sector insurer will use the US$1.4 million state-of-the art ICT Centre to monitor and detect banks’activities and prompt corrective actions.

KDIC will ensure that depositors can access their money in case of bank closure and apply appropriate resolution tools to reopen the bank and help it remain open. It will also help banks to restore market confidence and preserve the asset institutions when banks are placed under receivership.

Speaking at a media event the Ag.CEO KDIC Mr.Mohamud A. Mohamud hinted that the use of ICT will go a long way in helping in effective monitoring of the banking and deposit taking institutions. He also assured depositors with Kshs 1,000,000 and below that KDIC is able to provide cover that will safeguards depositors against losses incurred when a bank or deposit taking institution closes its operations.

“We are working on modalities to ensure that Kenyans don’t suffer when bank closes by cautioning the financial risks and safeguarding small and sophisticated depositors because of their vital role they drive the business of banking and contributing to the larger economy of the country” said Mohamud.
KDIC assured banks and deposit-taking financial institutions that it will employ effective measures to help banks when in financial crisis, diagnose their financial problems in advance and avoid being placed into receivership. In addition, banks that are already affected will be helped come out of liquidation.

This comes amid a serious crisis in the banking sector in Kenya. Twenty four banks have been placed under liquidation between 1993 and 2005. KDIC is currently liquidating 16 institution after successfully winding up eight banking institution. The latest bank to be placed under receivership was Chase bank, on April 7^th 2016.

KDIC is an independent and semi autonomous statutory body created by an act of parliament enacted on May 2012 seek to provide deposit insurance to depositors of banks and financial institutions. It will take over the mandates of the now defunct Deposits Protection Fund Board (DPFB) which was a department of the Central bank of Kenya .DPFB was seen by many banking insiders as the liquidator of banks. In a change of mandate, KDIC has now transformed its role and is now focusing on coming up with effective measures to stem banking failures and intervene when banks are still working.

KDIC has powers, through an act of parliament, to collect 0.15 per cent of all deposits made in banking and deposit-taking institutions. With this plan 35.9 million deposit accounts are fully covered 96.5 per cent of total number of deposits accounts with total deposit of 37.2 million are now fully covered by KDIC.

Media Council to launch new media subjects

                                                    PHOTO:COURTESY
BY Samwel Doe
@samweldoe

Middle level colleges offering journalism courses are required to introduce a unit in Digital Media next month once a new curriculum for journalist training developed by the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) comes into force.


The inclusion of the course was informed by a rise in breach of ethical codes of the profession. MCK officials say the new curriculum, mooted five years ago, would be operational in a month’s time. “The key feature in that curriculum will be inculcation of the use of digital content in newsrooms for the middle level colleges offering Journalism and Media studies,” said MCK head of communication, James Ratemo.


Substantive work has been done, including validation of the curriculum by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and the Ministry of Education, through Technical, Industrial, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (TIVET).


MCK officials and scholars say the meteoric rise of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and micro-blogging sites were undermining journalistic principles of accuracy and credibility. University of Nairobi School of Journalism Director, Dr Ndeti Ndati, described the new trend as worrying for stakeholders in the media industry.



“Core journalistic principles of accuracy and credibility are being jeopardised with the utilisation of digital media, raising important new ethical and practical questions for journalists and policy makers,” said Ndati.

A number of leading universities in Kenya have begun reviewing their media and journalism curriculum in tandem with the emerging social media and ICT trends. The University of Nairobi is already working on a programme to address such emerging challenges.



Digital era


UoN will launch a Media and Communication centre in July that will focus on refresher courses on effective engagements with the new media technologies and tools. It will also retrain media practitioners on threats from massive adoption of digital media. “The programme is meant to fill in the gaps that are posed by the ever changing media landscapes in Kenya and to give hands on skills and knowledge of how to engage with professionalism when it comes to new media,” Dr Ndeti said.


While journalists have always wanted to be first with a scoop, the fast pace of news-breaking has increased to such a point in the digital age that accuracy is sometimes being sacrificed. During a recent anti-IEBC protest for instance, a video of a man being beaten violently by police went viral. The topic began trending in a few hours and a media house reported that the victim had died and even revealed his supposed identity.

It later emerged that the said man was alive and the media house had to apologise.


Experts from journalism academia and MCK have undertaken studies and come up with recommendations that will inform policies and regulations governing digital appropriation and effective utilisation.


More than 31 million Kenyans now have access to internet with at least seven in every 10 accessing the services countrywide, latest communication Authority of Kenya data shows.

First Published in the People Daily.

UoN to offer financial journalism course

By Samwel Doe
@samweldoe

Kenya’s financial journalism standards have recorded significant improvement on the back of rise in executive training programmes targeted at mid-career professionals.

The country’s top universities have also begun incorporating financial journalism units to related courses in efforts to bridge gaps in data journalism. Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa (BMIA) country programme coordinator for Kenya, Dr Samuel Siringi attributes the improvement to two successful media executive programmes held in the country last year.

Siringi, also Associate Director, University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, says some of the students from the first cohorts have improved their writing and understanding of financial journalism.

“Some journalists joined the programme when they were just writing county news but after the training. We have received positive feedback both from editors and read their stories in newspapers, listened to them on FM radio and watched their reports on TV and they are doing great journalistic work.

That is evidence that the training is bringing enough impact to journalism in the country,” Dr Siringi said. He spoke during the official launch of Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa (BMIA)-Intake three of the Kenyan executive training for the advancement of financial journalism at Strathmore Business School recently.

University of Nairobi, Director School of Journalism Dr Ndeti Ndati said the institution is considering adding Financial Journalism to boost financial and business reporting. “Already two beneficiaries of the BMIA programme are working for Bloomberg, an international a news network,” he said.

The programme is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies led by Michael Bloomberg of US, with support from the Ford Foundation. The two have partnered with the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs), the University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Strathmore University.

Other partners are Rhodes university of South Africa and Lagos Business School of Nigeria. The aim of BMIA is to accelerate the development of a globally competitive media and financial reporting industry and to enhance the contribution of the media to accountability, transparency and good governance.

Mid-career journalists and journalism students will take part in a fellowship programme, including “educational offerings, coaching, peer learning, collaborative projects and networking opportunities”.

First published in the People Daily

Email and @ Symbol inventor dies at age 74

By Samwel Doe

Ray Tomlinson, the US programmer credited with inventing email in the 1970s and choosing the "@" symbol for the messaging system, died at the age of 74. 

He was the first to use the @ symbol in this way, to distinguish a user from its host.

Ray Tomlinson

The program changed the way people communicate both in business and in personal life, revolutionizing how “millions of people shop, bank, and keep in touch with friends and family, whether they are across town or across oceans”, reads his biography on the Internet Hall of Fame website.

“I sent a number of test messages to myself from one machine to the other. The test messages were entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them. Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP or something similar. 

When I was satisfied that the program seemed to work, I sent a message to the rest of my group explaining how to send messages over the network.Tomlinson said in his blog.

The first use of network email announced its own existence. Tomlinson's innovation has endured for 45 years - and shows no sign of going anywhere yet.

Indian company launches smartphone for less than Sh500

An Indian company has launched what is being described as the world's cheapest smartphone Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, priced at less than Sh500.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is the first smartphone to feature all new metal unibody design and has a relatively larger 4000mAh battery. The smartphone runs MIUI 7 based on Android 5.1 Lollipop and will receive Marshmallow update soon

Ringing Bells, a little-known manufacturer based in the northern Uttar Pradesh state, started selling the Freedom 251 on its website on Thursday. 

The phone was unveiled a day ahead of the launch and is being sold for 251 rupees (Sh350) - a price that sceptics said was far lower than what its components would cost.

Overwhelming demand caused Ring of Bells' website to crash hours after the phone went on sale, but it was back up and running on Thursday evening.

The company, based in the Delhi satellite city of Noida, was set up only last year and the launch event for the new phone on Wednesday night was attended by a senior leader from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party.

Company president Ashok Kumar Chadha said the Android smartphone would have pre-installed apps that tie into Modi initiatives such as "Make in India" and "Clean India".

The company currently imports the parts of Freedom 251 from Taiwan and assembles them in India.

The phone comes with a 10cm display and is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM. It comes with an in-built storage of 8GB which can further be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card.

While it’s all good with Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, the deciding factor will be the price and variants launching in India. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is now direct competitor to Le 1s and Lenovo K4 Note after that aggressive pricing.

Valentines coalesces around the idea of romance

By Samwel Doe

Many things in life have caught attention of my eye but very few have managed to occupy my heart as the much hyped Valentine.Just think about what love means to you. To me, it means caring about others and being cared for.

Valentines coalesces around the idea of romance.It is not a festival nor a gazetted holiday. It is a day our women drive the demand wagon of being showered with intelligent gifts  as display of emotions.Passion colors of red,pink,white,orange fills the air on this day. Its ritual of commodification makes it a popular event since the Media advertisers knows that we cannot celebrate love each and everyday they settled on this day.Historians traced some facts and pegged this lovers day to February 14th of every year.


valentines day!hail to the returning of this day.Old Bishop Valentine day.Great is this name which has impelled poor human to seek perfection in union.You are indeed a prefect immortal go between because of your mysterious personage in relationships.
 
Legend has it that, of the several martyrs named Valentinus who were persecuted for ministering to Christians, one in particular is venerated above all others. As the story goes, Valentine of Rome healed the blind daughter of his jailer during his imprisonment, and wrote a note to her signed “Your Valentine” prior to being thrown to the lions. Whether his unhappy end happened on the day the Gregorian calendar now calls February 14th is unknown.

For Me there is no day secretly marked in my calendar as this day.This day charming little missives like chocolates,roses,flowers and gifts crises-cross each other in the streets and turning of my city Nairobi. On this day Nairobi is usually painted red.

People are wearing red and everything seems to be ready for reds. Whether the hype is a commercial gimmick or real show of affection,entrepreneurs are poised to cash in on the prevailing sentiment by introducing marketing concepts like experiential gift boxes, special cupcakes and even delivering on demand rose flowers to sweethearts.

NETFUND award propelling enterprise innovations toward green development

 

 By Samwel Ouma


NETFUND Green Innovations Award is a green entrepreneurship initiative promotion giving up to Sh5 million to a business incubation that provide environmentally friendly solutions.

The third Phase of NETFUND Green Innovations Award was launched on the 24th November, 2015 with support from the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi, USAID, and the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Environment Natural Resources & RDAs among other funding and implementing partners.

Call for application to the award is ongoing until 30th of January 2016. ”Every green project from all over the country is encouraged to apply online on www.netfund.go.ke or by picking application forms at NEMA, Kenya Forest Service, Kenya Wildlife Service and Women Enterprise Fund county offices as well as Posta office branches countrywide,” explained NETFUND, Ag. Communications and Awards Manager Ms. Carole Macharia.

“In addition to incubation, winning initiatives that may not have a business angle to them but are good environmental initiatives stand to benefit from funding aimed at up-scaling their initiatives.

 The funding in form of grants is awarded in two tranches and amounts to Sh1 million for first prize winners in all categories, Sh500, 000 for second prize winners in all categories and third prize winners Sh250,000 for third prize winners in all categories. The overall winner gets an additional SH1 million” adds Ms. Macharia.

The program targets bottom of the pyramid segment of the population by encouraging entrepreneurs in the grassroots to come up with green development enterprises in the areas of energy, waste management, water conservation and agribusiness.
Innovative ideas stand a chance of being supported with a seed capital worth Sh2 million.

The award is also geared towards giving participants a platform to showcase environmentally friendly initiatives, give them an opportunity to be recognized and link them to investors for the most viable green initiatives.

“For eligibility, applicants must be located in Kenya and their initiatives must have a clear focus on environmental management and conservation.

The initiatives must also demonstrate tangible results towards solving a given environmental issue and conform to existing environmental regulations,” said Sweeny Ogeto, Senior Projects Officer at NETFUND.

The program aims at achieving solutions that tackle climate change and poverty reduction while enhancing green entrepreneurships.

“Since no one wants to destroy the environment willfully, we believe we can sustain ourselves while respecting the environment and pursue development in a sustainable way. NETFUND GIA supports green enterprising in line with vision 2030 and attention drawn to climate change on low carbon economies.” explained Sweeny.

Small and medium sized enterprises, secondary schools, primary schools, individuals, civil society organizations and women groups are eligible and are encouraged to participate in this competition. After the application process, selection is done in two phases.

“After the application process, the ideas are audited and the best idea selected by judges who come from relevant fields of expertise, due diligence is done and the best ideas selected to pre-incubation process where their concepts are proved.” Sweeny Said.