Wycliffe Muga

Nairobi

Columnist at The Star (Kenya)

COLUMNIST, THE STAR

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Articles

MUGA: Why political promises take long to fulfill

1 week ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

At some point in the late1980s, I accompanied a friend of mine to the “launch” of a water project in a rural part of Kenya. My friend had the ambition of being elected the next MP of that constituency. But he had not begun to campaign yet and indeed posed as a great supporter of the serving MP to disguise this ambition. Hence he had been invited to the official launch of that project.
MUGA: Limits of infrastructure in promoting economic growth

2 weeks ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

There has been much talk of “infrastructure projects” following President William Ruto’s recent state visit to China. A good part of this, I believe, is that we tend to see infrastructure as the golden key to “development” (by which we mean, economic growth). And China may not have a great reputation in the respect for human rights: but it has a stellar reputation when it comes to building world-class infrastructure.
Debate over colonial benefit to rural Kenya

3 weeks ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

In SummaryPros and cons of colonial rule are weighed with critical but balanced eyeIn continuing to review Nicholas Rankin’s ‘Trapped in History: Kenya, Mau Mau and Me’, there is the question of the good and the bad of British rule, with education already highlighted among the positives and education and agriculture pending.
Book scrutinising colonial history irks and disillusions

3 weeks ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

It’s not often that you find that what you have in a 560-page book is actually two books within the same covers. One of them a remarkably well-researched work of history, and the other a rather uninspiring personal memoir of the author’s early days spent in Kenya as a child of a middle-class British expatriate family. But such is the case withTrapped in History; Kenya, Mau Mau And Me by Nicholas Rankin.
WYCLIFFE MUGA: The difficult journey to economic opportunity

1 month ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

What is the difference between a container of coffee being shipped out to Germany from the Kilindini Port in Mombasa, and a planeload of German tourists arriving at Mombasa’s Moi International Airport? From an insular Kenyan point of view, there is no real difference. In one case, we have Germans paying for Kenyan agricultural goods. On the other, we have Germans paying for Kenyan tourism services.
MUGA: Plenty of work ahead for Kenyan think tanks

1 month ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

ROUGHLY 20 years ago, and at a time when America was far friendlier to foreigners than it appears to be at present, I had the good fortune of attending a number of meetings with American think tanks both in New York and in Washington DC. Well, what impressed me most was the capacity the resident scholars at the American think tanks had for projecting, not just a few years ahead, but decades ahead, to assess the threats and opportunities that potentially lay ahead for their country.
MUGA: USAID and failure of communications in Kenya

1 month ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

WITHIN the opinions and commentary sections of the local mainstream media, you will often find contributors to those pages self-identify as “communications experts” or “media strategists” or any of the many other titles used to identify those who work in what I shall broadly term as “media relations.”So much so that you might be justified in wondering if Kenya has a huge surplus of people, with a degree of expertise in media relations. In my opinion, this is not quite the case.
WYCLIFFE MUGA: Individual flourishing the only true ‘development’

1 month ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

If you are a regular reader of the more highbrow US mainstream publications, you will know that the question which some of the most celebrated American journalists are wrestling with at this time, is that of trying to understand “the Trump voter.” For to all such writers it had all along during the 2024 presidential campaigns been so obvious that candidate Donald Trump was lying every single day, and making promises he could not possibly keep, that they could not see how he could possibly win.
WYCLIFFE MUGA: Kenya’s political stability is confirmed yet again

2 months ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

In SummaryThe (now former) Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has pledged that he will make Ruto a one-term president. But we all take it for granted that he proposes to achieve this goal through the political process, and not by unleashing violence. STAR ILLUSTRATIONThere are many ways of looking at the political drama of the past week, which ended with President William Ruto and the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga signing what amounted to a power-sharing political pact.
WYCLIFFE MUGA: Kenya can manage HIV-AIDS programmes without USAID

2 months ago | the-star.co.ke | Wycliffe Muga

In SummaryWith most ARVs being generics manufactured in India, the cost is as low as Sh3,000 a month (ie, Sh36,000 a year). This is not peanuts to most Kenyan families but should be affordable with support from the national health insurance institutions. STAR ILLUSTRATIONSomething that has impressed me most profoundly over the years, is the capacity of families to recover from adversity.