My youngling (she is three) keeps saying, “when coronavirus ends, we shall do ….”. Like her, we say it loud or deep-down wish that we could miraculously snap out of whatever this is and get on with life as we knew it. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that there is a breaking of the norm because human nature dislikes change and the disruption of known patterns and routines we effectively control.
All African countries, including Kenya, latched onto the ‘Africa rising’ narrative peddled in the early 2000s after a series of …
In Kenya and Africa at large, politics is a filter through which many, if not all, things are perceived. However, when COVID-19 took over our lives in March, politicians who claim to have all the answers, momentarily went suspiciously quiet while the media fumbled to get enough news items. At that point, COVID-19 was beyond political maneuver and beyond anybody’s control – evidence
I had a rare opportunity to speak with innovative people questioning whether global immune technologies seeking to find systemic solutions to global pandemics can help build a shock-resistant planet. Such technologies include those that “can detect a novel pathogen in the air, water, or soil of the Earth and rapidly sequence its DNA or RNA”[1] to neutralize the pathogen before its
The uncertainty of not knowing what lies ahead is disarming in many ways because it renders us powerless. One way to navigate that ambiguity is to use historical data to forecast the future. The predictions help create some certainty about where the future is headed and, in some way, make things less obscure. Various modelers, for example, had anticipated future COVID-19 infection
I was invited last week to speak about effective inclusion – a subject that many have worked on for a long with mixed results – and I felt it is essential to write a short article on why futures is imperative in fostering participation and inclusion in the public policymaking process. Policymaking is the mechanism through which the government identifies a public problem and puts a
