[kictanet] Making Sense of our development

Fri Oct 12 19:44:24 EAT 2012

Hey All,

Dr. Ndemo has an acute eye of spotting killer plans that have potential.
Some time back there was a feature on the news of a lady making chairs out
of woven hyacinth fibers but that just died off. Why the local moguls and
their attendant overlords over in nairobi did not push for market in the
govt offices I have no idea. The opportunities are uncountable but we all
go to do CPAs and get degrees with little intention of aplying the
academics.

I believe the German way of doing thing is superior. have people specialize
very early in their life befor committing to university programs that add
little to their value and employability. Apprenticeship and for those that
want to train further go to university.
Killing our polytechnics and colleges is detrimental to all.

Hyacinth is currently a problem. Why not turn it into a resource?

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Dorcas Muthoni <dmuthoni at gmail.com> wrote:

> Kenya Investment Authority has been advertising the opportunity for
> manufacture of fertilizer
> http://www.investmentkenya.com/opportunities/manufacturing
>
> I hope they are aware of this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
>
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 8:37 PM, <bitange at jambo.co.ke> wrote:
>
>> Listers,
>> I very much know that my post today is not directly ICT but its
>> implications have a great bearing on the decisions we make about our
>> future development in ICT.
>>
>> Page 19 of the Star of Thursday, October 11th, carried a story on Water
>> Hyacinth titled “Water hyacinth project threatened by court order”.  This
>> is apparently a donor funded project in its phase two under Lake Victoria
>> Environmental Management Project (LVEMP).
>>
>> LVEMP  II is an eight-year US$254 million (Ksh. 2.1 billion) old regional
>> project being implemented in the five East African Community partner
>> states says the article.  Objectives of the project include:  improving
>> “collaborative management of trans-boundary natural resources of Lake
>> Victoria basin” as well as “reduce environmental stress in the targeted
>> pollution hotspots and selected degraded sub-catchment areas as a way of
>> improving the livelihoods of communities who depend on the lake basin’s
>> resources”.
>>
>> One will hope that the project is supposed to physically remove water
>> hyacinth from the lake to enable the people access the resources from the
>> lake.  However, in the past eight years the spread of this water menace
>> has more than tripled and this is what prompted me we to re-examine the
>> objectives as stated. If these objectives were to be re-stated in
>> simplified English, the real meaning could be to help citizens of East
>> Africa understand how to collaborate and manage their resources as well as
>> reduce their stress.  The project therefore has nothing to do with water
>> hyacinth and hence the reason why the people are fighting over it.
>>
>> If the donor language were to be simpler, they would have thought about
>> project sustainability in which case we did not need all the resources
>> that is at the disposal of the fighting citizens.  In my view we needed
>> only US$50 (US$10 million for each country) to set up an organic
>> fertilizer factory.  Hyacinth has been found to be a good ingredient for
>> organic fertilizer.  Just recently I wrote a blog how soil nutrients have
>> been depleted in densely populated districts with excessive land
>> sub-divisions.  Studies also show productivity levels dropping
>> significantly that our food security and safety is at its worst threat.
>>
>> Further, chemical fertilizer may be poisoning our ground water and may be
>> likely the cause of increased cancer cases in the region.  There is
>> greater urgency than ever before that we exploit every opportunity for
>> developing organic fertilizer like hyacinth that would improve on
>> productivity, ensure sustainable development and reduce its impact on our
>> water resources.  Our problems would only be solved by us and as such
>> foreign interventions will not always be a universal remedy to our
>> predicament.
>>
>> Ndemo.
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Muthoni
>
> My Blog: http://rugongo.blogspot.com/
> --------------------------------------------
> Mahatma Gandhi once said:-
>
> First they ignore you,
> Then they laugh at you,
> Then they fight you,
> AND THEN YOU WIN!!!
>
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> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform
> for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and
> regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT
> sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
>
> KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors
> online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth,
> share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do
> not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
>

-- 
Regards,

Mark Mwangi

markmwangi.me.ke
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