jacob, Author at Mugendi

jacob

The Evolution of Electricity and Home Appliances

February 2, 2021September 25, 2023 3 min read

In 1879, Thomas Edison had a light bulb moment – literally. He invented a working light bulb. It was a major disruption to a world that was used to expensive and dirty oil lamps. Only the rich could afford to stay up late at night burning the midnight oil. The world was on the brink of a revolution.

To make the invention work, several things needed to be done. One of them was a method of electrical production and distribution. In 1882, Edison switched on the first power station that would produce electricity and distribute it to neighboring factories. This was the beginning of the long journey towards commercializing electricity and a lot of work went into inventing and designing the infrastructure that would make that a success.

Transmission over long distances was a problem until Swedish Engineer Jonas Wenström came up with a solution that was in the form of a 3-phase AC current. This allowed for industries to be built away from Power generation sites, such as rivers. Prior to that, electricity needed to be produced near where it would be consumed and this would involve playing about with the location of the consumers (industries), or the power plants. Today, electricity can be transported over thousands of miles with minimal losses.

As electricity became a popular source of energy, one area that had a slow application was home appliances.

The Start of Home Appliances

Initially, electricity was being supplied in homes only for lighting purposes and it remained so for a long time. There were no electric appliances to be used at home. It was a lighting affair.

Appliances started showing up with the electric fan in 1890. Electric iron, vacuum cleaner, toaster, and a washing machine showed up. All these were primitive devices, very different from what we have today. The vacuum cleaner was so bulky that it needed at least two people to operate. It was the beginning of an age when people realized that they could use the newly available energy to make work easier at home.

The development followed an interesting path because houses were only wired for lighting. This means that all the appliances that were available would be screwed into the bulb holder. There were neither electric sockets/receptacles nor switches that could regulate the flow of power. Devices were meant to be unplugged when not in use.

With time, home appliances became more affordable, available, and safer to use. This necessitated planning for them, and building services providers started to design the house wiring in a way that could accommodate the appliances.

With the advent of consumer electronics, home appliances increased and today there are tens of appliances that are used at home. These include air conditioners, dishwashers, clothes dryers, drying cabinets, freezers, refrigerators, kitchen stoves, water heaters, washing machines, trash compactors, microwave ovens, and induction cookers.

Other smaller appliances include juicers, electric mixers, meat grinders, coffee grinders, deep fryers, herb grinders, food processors, electric kettles, waffle irons, coffee makers, blenders, dough blenders, rice cookers, toasters, and exhaust hoods. Consumer electronics include radio receivers, TVs, cameras, computers, smartphones, and many more.

Advancement in Home Wiring

House wiring has been standardized to allow for the adoption of various home appliances that may be needed. One of the needs today is to allow for smart devices that are interconnected and possibly connected to the internet.

However, the current wiring practices applied today are very rigid and possibly fit for the late 80’s. Even houses that are being built today fail to plan for the increasing number of appliances that are in use today and with little planning for smart devices. You find a decent house with only two sockets in the kitchen. In some cases, there are no decent places to plug in a washing machine without having to run extension cords around the house.

Even with simple devices like home theaters, one is forced to run cables under the seats and in awkward places. CCTV installations force one to start drilling and fitting conduits in places where they could have easily been provisioned for during the design. Getting the WiFi signal in different parts of the house is usually a hectic task.

It is like we are still living in the age when everything was plugged into the light bulb holder.

The Huduma Namba

January 20, 2021 6 min read

Huduma Namba has been a running theme in Kenya for almost two years now. This is a biometric digital identification system for Kenyan Citizens, technically known as the National Integrated Identification Management Systems (NIIMS). It was aimed at creating a single source of person’s identity in Kenya with the aim of increasing access to government services and also reduces chances of identity theft.

The system would involve registration of all person aged six years and above in Kenya by the government, by collecting biometric and other data such as fingerprints retina and iris scan, contact information, family, profession and other biodata. This was b

Since its inception, there has been a number of challenges to the project and while the government started issuing the cards in October 2020, there is still a long way to go. First, we look at why this was started in the first place.

Why Identification?

Having a form of legal identity is important. Everyone needs a document or something demonstrate that they are what they say they are. Without such, it is almost impossible to identify oneself outside your local community and this effectively denies one access to many services. You cannot get a passport, you cannot open a bank account, you cannot register a SIM card and in an increasingly digital world, you have little options.

Today, more than 1 billion people in the world lack a form of a recognized ID.

This is why various global bodies have been pushing to get everybody a form of Identification. Article Six of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” This is also in Target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seeks to provide legal identity for all by the year 2030.

The State of Identification in Kenya

In Kenya, we’ve had a form of identification in place – the National ID – which is mandatory for every Kenyan aged 18 years and above. This has always been very useful because it is a unique identifier for every person in the country, making it possible to identify people by their ID numbers. In places where such does not exist, chaos rule. Banks have to figure out which ‘John Doe’ made a bank deposit because there are many John Doe.

However, the system that currently exists in Kenya has a major limitation majorly because it is not digital. It involves information on paper, with a passport photo and a signature as the primary method of identification. There is also an image of the holder’s fingerprint, but this is also on paper and it is not easy to compare one’s fingerprint against a database of fingerprints held on paper. This is where a form of digital identification proves useful, and the government’s response to this was the Huduma Namba.

The Solution

In 2019, the government came up with a miscellaneous act to amend the Registration of Persons Act, allowing for the establishment of a biometric database of Kenyans – NIIMS. From the government, it was supposed to be a system with one card that holds all the information about the person such as driving license, NHIF information, birth registration, tax information and any other data held by government institutions.

Challenges in Implementation

The implementation of the project was at best chaotic and at worst, designed to fail. As Wainaina Mungai from SafeHouse Africa opines, Kenya needed the Huduma Namba, but not in the form that it was presented or the extent of data it sought to capture and store. It would help ensure the integrity of data and reduce the number of IDs required to access services. One challenge in the implementation was the lack of adherence to an enabling legal framework anchored in international best practice and treaties Kenya should ratify.

Limited public participation meant that the public was not fully aware of what the system was about, as well as the potential benefits of the project. Instead of educating people so that they could register based on the perceived benefits, the government resulted to threats, warning people that they may not receive some government services if they did not register.

This undermined the whole process because this is a major change to how people access government services and principles of change management should have been applied. Kenyan could have learnt from the difficulties experienced in Tanzania, India and Nigeria while implementing a national ID system. In all these places, it has taken quite a long time and it is unreasonable to expect that all Kenyans would quickly rush to register for a service they knew little about. The court cases in India dragged on for ten years.

The issue of privacy was also raised. At the start if the process, Kenya lacked the necessary laws to govern the use of the data that was being collected. This is data that could be used to profile people and it was not very clear what was the use of the data. There needed to be a clearly defined use for the data and the users should retain the ownership of the data. The government had also intended to collect DNA and location information, something that would be an infringement of privacy and would make the whole process even more suspicious. Luckily. This part was struck out by the court but damage had already been done.

There was also the challenge with security. This was a serious flaw because when you have biometric data centralized, you attract hackers who can easily get away with the data. The people handling the data could also pose a risk to the same, hence the need to have a platform that is secure, such as the one running on blockchain technology. This has been used in places like Estonia where they have a functioning digital ID. The challenge with biometric data is that it cannot be changed if breached. While one can easily change a password, they cannot change their fingerprint.

Another unintended consequence that could result from the Huduma Namba is exclusion; the exact opposite of what it intends to achieve. If there is one card that will be used to access all government service, lacking that card means that one is locked out from all such services. This was a concern raised by the Nubian community who lack ID cards, hence were not eligible to be registered for the Huduma Namba.

What Next?

No doubt, a functional digital ID is becoming increasingly necessary in a digital world. Kenya needs to take this route to fully take advantage of the digital revolution, but the process should be done right.

A research by The Engine Room titled ‘Understanding the Lived Effects of Digital ID: A Multi-Country Study’ argues that the process of obtaining a digital ID matters just as much as the end result. The policies that are establish to protect the rights of the people are also useless unless if they are operationalized. This calls for Kenya to rethink the implementation process in a way that the concerns raised are catered for and have a realistic timeline. It may be a few more years before we can have the Huduma Namba fully functional.

But the benefits would be great. Huduma Namba would lead to an easy way of accessing government services and would result to time and resources saved. The identification system would also benefit the private sector by making it easy to offer financial services to all people and greatly reduce the Know-Your-Customer process. Processes like applying for passports would be easier and shorter because one would not need to present the same data to the immigration department again. There would be no need of a complicated registration process in schools. All this and much more would translate to money saved.

As the global economy becomes increasingly digital, Huduma Namba might be the magic wand that will propel Kenya to benefit from data, but we still have a long way to go.

When it Comes to Data, The More, The Merrier

January 12, 2021 2 min read

What if I gave you a list of all the phone numbers that are registered in Kenya? What would you do with this information? Nothing much, unless if you wanted to blindly text every Kenyan. Perhaps, you could if you are running a presidential campaign, or sell Kensalt which is a product used by almost all Kenyans, but this would not even be a good marketing strategy.

What if I added the names in addition to the phone numbers? You could easily search for the phone number of any person you want, as long as you know their name. This could be useful, although you would need time to sort out through the different John Does. There would still be limited commercial uses.

Add the date of birth, and the data becomes more useful. You can now target people on their birthday, and you can as well decide to text all the people aged 18 years telling them of the great courses you are offering. The data begins to make sense.

If location data is included, the data becomes a real asset. You can SMS people of a given location telling them about a new hospital that you opened. You could SMS residents of a given ward to ask them to support your political ambitions of becoming a Member of the County Assembly. Through a combination of age and location, you could text people who are likely to be parents and tell them about a new school you started.

Add gender, and you could message ladies of a certain region, telling them of your beauty products shop and the offers that you have. Since you have their names, you would be addressing them by name and it would feel even better.

We can add more and more data which can help make the data even more useful. For example, if we added work related data, something better can even happen. You could contact all the teachers and tell them of useful resources for their students. You could contact all the farmers and offer to sell them effective pesticides. You could target people just about to retire and help them invest their pension funds. Data becomes even more valuable.

If we added some information to that data, like the information on who is expecting a baby, we could easily sell to them various baby products. If we add information about who loves football, it would be easy to tell who to tell a sports jersey to. If we add information on who loves to travel for holidays, we can message people who are likely to take a vacation and give them irresistible offers.

The more the data points, the more useful is the data. Better, if one can have a real time access to that data, the more it would be easier to make use of it. This is one advantage that platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter have.

Reasons Why People opt for Solar Energy

January 5, 2021 1 min read

Almost everyone is switching to solar.

That’s not true, but it is a common statement today. The world is talking about renewable energy and for most people, solar comes to mind. If you want to join the bandwagon, perhaps you need to figure out if it is suitable for you. Here are some of the reasons why people are opting for solar energy.

Some people are looking for a cleaner source of energy that is good for the environment. This is a major motivation for many people who are keen on sustainability.
Others are looking for a cheaper source of power. They turn to solar to help lower their utility bills.
Some are looking for independence and a form of power they have more control over. The utilities may not offer the level of reliability that they need.
In areas not served by power utilities, people have no other option. They turn to solar.
Still, others want solar energy because it is cool. They want to throw the lines like ‘since I went off the grid…’ or share photos of their impressive installations. For these, solar is and will remain cool in an Instagramable world.

What’s your reason?

The Dirty Side of Solar Energy

January 2, 2021 2 min read

When it is time to go green, solar power becomes a favorite source of energy. Many people and institutions continue to adopt this source of energy that is essentially free and available in many places especially along the equator.

But it comes at a cost. There are two matters of concern as far as solar energy is concerned:

Spinning Reserve

A major challenge with wind and solar is that they demand for a spinning reserve in order to compensate for the unpredictable nature of these energy sources. If you have 300 MW, you need to set aside a reliable 100 MW on standby, and this often comes from hydro. The problem with this is that hydro is a very cheap source of power and it is better if we are using it at full capacity. This is something that increases the general cost of electricity.

The alternative could be something different, but dirty, such as coal. As a country increases the use of solar and wind energy, the more it will require to have a different source of power on standby.

Waste

The process of manufacturing solar panels is not very clean. On the other hand, the panels do not last forever, and need to be disposed.

There are many places without a definite recycling plans for these panels, and soon we might see a lot of waste starting to pile up. Recycling is not easy, and is not cheap. Manufacturers have to be compelled to recycle, and this would be after a long time of use – 20 years or so. This makes the whole process difficult especially in Africa where the solar panels are imported.

What’s Next?

While there are such challenges, the future of solar still looks bright. The technology is improving at a very fast speed and some of the current challenges will be solved with time. The future of solar is still bright.

2020: A Lesson on Resilience

December 31, 2020 3 min read

I don’t need to introduce the year 2020 to anybody on planet Earth because the year has done a pretty good job of announcing its presence. The rich, the poor, the famous, the obscure, the healthy, the sickly, the employed, the unemployed and every possible group of people has felt the fangs of the year pierce.

For most people, it has been a year of losses, failures, pain and all the bad things that we would not even want our enemies to experience. It would make sense to say good riddance to 2020, but the lessons are also big. It would be worse if we do not learn from the failures of 2020. Remember, he who refuses to learn from history are destined to repeat it.

One of the greatest lessons of 2020 is building resilience in an environment where failure is inevitable. The year taught us that one can fail in almost any sector, and the most important skill is to be able to rise up when the fall comes.

It could have been a job loss, stalled academic programs, closed business or a general loss of income. This nearly affected everybody.

When Losing a Job is Worse than never being Employed

One of the observations was that sometimes, people who lose their jobs end up becoming worse than those who never had them in the first place. Why does that happen? Because people without jobs usually develop mechanisms to cope with very little incomes, while those with jobs don’t. The poor adapt to living in almost any environment but the rich rarely do that. When disaster strikes, it is those who were unprepared who are hit hard.

While many of them are able to rise up again given an opportunity like a new job, the period with no job or income hits people hard. Their mental health takes a big hit and almost paralysis them. This is because they are not able to survive in a state of reduced incomes. This affected many people in 2020.

Is it possible for one to be immune from such setbacks? It is, but it is not easy.

Learning to Fall from the Toddlers

There is no better place to understand how we should react to failure than from watching babies learn to walk. They start by learning how to stand, then walk while supported, before they can finally start walking without any support. The initial phase involves walking for a short distance, many times targeting to reach a support object a few steps away.

During this process, the baby will fall many times. I realized that one of the key skills that they master early is how to fall. They figure out how to fall forward and how to fall backwards, safely. With this mastered, they are free to fall anytime since they can fall safely. They no longer fear the fall, and can safely try out walking which comes with many falls, and needs persistent attempts in order to master.

That is how we all end up walking; a simple skill because we all have, but a very complex skills if you ask the engineers trying to make walking robots.

Building Resilience

Whatever 2021 holds, we must build skills that will allow us to rise if we fall. We need to figure out how to keep moving with reduced incomes, how to still operate when we are grounded, how to achieve the most even when health is failing, and how to identify new opportunities that can lubricate life when the going gets tough.

How we achieve this may vary from person to person or situation to situation, but is definitely necessary.

Is Kenya Becoming a Retail Deathplace?

December 15, 2020 3 min read

Kenya is quickly becoming a deathbed for giant retailers. In a period of about six years, several retailers that had a national presence have met their grave in what appears to be a national curse that befalls whoever attempts to win the retail

The state owned Uchumi Supermarket has died multiple deaths, and everyone knows that the remaining shell is just a cash cow for many corrupt stakeholders. Nakumatt followed suit, although it is not fair to call Nakumatt a supermarket, but a retailed supported money laundering platform. It was once the biggest retailer in Kenya but met its death in 2017.

Ukwala was rescued by Choppies, but this later found its death in the Kenyan Market. Shoprite also exited Kenya, although it was also exiting many other markets outside South Africa. Ebrahims closed down in 2019.

Tuskys Supermarket is on life support.

Impossible Failures

When Nakumatt shutdown, details of how the supermarket was operating shocked many. The supermarket was sustained by suppliers who supplied goods on credit and would be paid months later. Almost all the assets the company was using were leased, leading to a situation where the company was in debts worth billions of shillings but had very little assets. Disgruntled suppliers had nowhere to turn to.

This is the puzzle of the retailers that get goods on credit, sell in cash but suffer cashflow problems. What is killing them?

Bad management, fraud and outright theft are to blame.

Fraud in Family Businesses

One of the problems that have plagued major supermarkets in Kenya is that they are family ran businesses with little external oversight. There have been cases where directors and shareholder would get interest free loans from the businesses or simply get money transferred to their other companies.

In the case of Tuskys, this seems to be the cause of death. Nakumatt was also bleeding for the same reason. This could be a general pointer to how family owned enterprise are run in Kenya.

Theft in Retail

The retail sector is also a beneficiary of the rampant corruption that plagues the country. Kenyans holding political positions are extremely corrupt, but that is just a celebrity bias. Kenyans are corrupt at all levels, and any retail service provider will have to work very hard to stop their employees from stealing from them.

This is one reasons that were cited for the closure of Ebrahim supermarket, a 75-year-old retail chain in Kenya. Dishonest employees had milked it dry; never to rise again. I have personally witnessed an employee stealing from a supermarket and I have heard from a supermarket owner talking about the pain she went through as employees looted her business dry.

If you want to do retail business in Kenya, you must invest in good control mechanism.

The Future

Retails in Kenya seems to be a zero sum game. When Nakumatt died, Tuskys sprang up and grew quickly. With Tuskys on the deathbed, another giant is rising fast. Naivas now has 64 stores in Kenya, followed by Quickmart with 34 stores and Chanadarana with 20. Naivas and Quickmart have diverse ownership that includes foreign investors, and we hope that they will survive the curse that has stalked the Kenyan retail giants. Carrefour is also doing well, but they are all always doing well until the first domino moves and the whole thing crumbles.

2020 KeNIC Awards

December 8, 2020 3 min read

The 4^th annual .KE Registar Awards was held virtually on 2^nd December 2020. This is an event that brings together all the .KE domain registrars together and is organized by KeNIC, the registry in charge of the .KE ccTLD. This year’s event had been postponed due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and was eventually held virtually.

In the awards, KeNIC CEO Joel Karubiu said that 2019 was a good year for KeNIC where 47k domain were registered, an improvement from the 39k domains that had been registered in 2018. Currently, the registry has already surpassed the 100k domain mark and prospects for 2020 seem to be even better.

The CEO also said that KeNIC has made a number of changes such as strengthening its governance by bringing more people into the Board. In addition, the support to the registrars has been improved and there are regular newsletters and webinars that are done by the registry.

Bob Ochieng’ who is the Stakeholder Engagement Senior Manager – Eastern & Southern Africa with ICANN talked about the resilience of the DNS during the pandemic, noting that this is something that had kept the world moving during the Pandemic. He said that KeNIC is a major stakeholder in keeping Kenyans online, and also noted that ccTLDs formed 7 out of 10 TLDs in the world, although none of these is from Africa. He argued that Africa needs to grow these numbers to strengthen its voice on the global scene.

Others present include Barrack Otieno – the General Manager Africa Top Level Domains Organization (AfTLD), KeNIC staff, Board members, registrars and other stakeholders who participated remotely.

Awards

Some of the awards given were:

.KE Registration award

Those nominated were the registrars with more than 2500 registrations during that period and were Truehost Cloud, Global Internet Fortunes, Safaricom, EAC Directory, Sasahost and Kenya Website Experts.

The winner for this award was Global Internet Fortunes with Kenya Website Experts as First runner’s up and Truehost Cloud as the second runners up.

Customer Support and Retention

For nomination to this category, a registrar needed to have more than 2000 domains, have a 24/7 customer support line, actively sends renewal notifications to clients, registered growth in the new registrations and renewal of domains, and has an automated domain renewal process.

The winner for this category was Kenya Website Experts with EAC Directory as first runners up and Sasahost as second runners up.

.KE Marketing award

Registrars were awarded for their marketing effort, which includes actively engaging with potential clients, running adverts, online marketing campaigns, direct sales and holding events to promote the .KE brand.

The winner for this category was deepAfrica with Kenyaweb.com as first runners up and Peak & Dale as second runners up.

New Registrar of the Year

This was for the new registrar who had been a member for at least six months and showed a remarkable growth.
Winner: HostPinnacle

Registrar of the Year

This was for the top registrar in sales who showed consistent growth with significant registration of new domains.
Winner: Global Internet Fortunes

Android Tax?

November 23, 2020 1 min read

Can you imagine Google squeezing out 1.8% of all income from the poorest of all people in the developing world? It sounds crazy, but it could be happening.

Word going round is that Android phones exchange 260 MB of data every month with Google servers. This happens in the background even when no applications are running and even when using cellular network.

If this allegation is true, then Google has a big case to answer. 260 MB of data would easily go unnoticed in a world where people have access to a dedicated bandwidth of internet connection. But for the many parts of the world where people depend on cellular networks to access the internet, this is something of great concern.

According to the Alliance for Affordable Internet, the average cost of 1GB of mobile broadband in Africa was 7.12% of average monthly income in 2019. This implies that this background data transfer by Android phones would cost people 1.8% of their total income, if they have the data and keep mobile data enabled on their phones.

This is a major heist!

It could be the reason why many people suspect that telcos such as Safaricom steal their mobile data. It would be the reason why most people will keep mobile data disabled on their phones, unless they are actively using it. Android users could be paying a form of tax!

Is it true, Google?

In God We Trust, Everyone Else Bring Data

November 9, 2020 2 min read

It is often said that data is the new oil.

This statement is in comparison to the transformation that oil has brought to the world since the late 1800s, where oil has become the most used energy source today. Before the Second Industrial Revolution, different forms of oil were in use for various purposes but it was the large-scale production and use of crude oil and its products that was transformational.

This is the same case with data. While data has played a crucial role in the digital economy today, it is not something that is new to human beings. Throughout history, people have leveraged data to their advantage. Since we learnt how to count and write, an ongoing evolution has been the capture and use of data.

The Story of the Kenyan Farmer

I heard of a story about a settler farmer in the Rift Valley region of Kenya who was quite good in predicting the weather, to the extent that neighbors thought that he had some divine powers. While other farmers were losing crops to rain failure, he seemed to know if and when the rains would come and thus plan accordingly.

It took the intervention of inquisitive primary school pupils to find out the powers behind his accurate weather prediction, which turned out to be data. His family had kept accurate weather records for over 70 years, and from this data there were some obvious patterns and cycles. Using this data, the good farmer was becoming a weather guru.

Data Can Tell Stories

Interpreting data can reveal a lot.

Target, an American retail corporation, wanted to identify pregnant women who frequented their stores. As it turns out, by analyzing the purchasing behavior of customers, it is possible to identify an expectant woman and even predict the expected date of delivery.

Within a short time, Target was able to identify expectant women so accurately that it brought conflicts elsewhere. An angry parent stormed Target to protest that they were sending her teenage daughter promotions for expectant mothers. Weeks later, the same parent came back to Target to apologize because the daughter was actually pregnant.

For Target, what a customer put in the shopping basked was as good as a pregnancy test.

If Data, then What?

Understanding how data works can help one make one goo use of the opportunities presented by the same. It will also help one stay safe by sharing their data responsibly. It has been proven that most Kenyans are unknowingly giving out their personal data online.

In the coming articles, I will share how data is transforming our world today. Data is valuable, but to them that are able to exploit it.

All Posts By jacob