Of rattle snakes and grapes of wrath: rise, fall and rise of independent media in Kenya

The Kenyan case highlights government’s recourse to sophisticated, “silent” but effective process of emasculating the media in spite of the robustness of the constitutional, legal and institutional frames for media behaviour. The author, Peter Kimani, notes further, however, that investments in the technology sector have led to an empowered citizenry and helped to reorganize the way news is sourced and disseminated, particularly through mobile telephony. According to him, “this, it is safe to predict, is the next news frontier, and start-ups and other fringe news portals are likely to problematize power relations between media barons and the state, and provoke reassessment in the way censorship is/will be exercised in the near future”

Scaling land and water technologies in Tanzania: Opportunities, challenges and policy implications

The scaling of land and water technologies has widely increased across different parts of the world; and is recognized as important for ecological systems. These technologies contribute to sustainable management of watersheds on which agriculture, food production and rural livelihoods for most developing communities depend upon. There are ongoing efforts designed to halt land degradation in the Western Usambara which have arisen from pressure on land resources mainly caused by demographic growth, deforestation and the abandoning of the traditional regenerative land use and farming systems. Socio-cultural and economic factors such as education level, age, gender, and land tenure, marital status and income earnings of smallholder farmers are factors considered important in the adoption of land and water management practices. Environmental factors were also identified as limiting factors to smallholder farmers in soil-water management practices. Such factors involved physical distance, slope, type of crops grown and farm sizes. Insecure land tenure especially among women limits their adoption of the technologies. Technological complexity of the technology (farmers prefer technology that are less complex and easier to use), preference for less labor intensive technology, required capital, land ownership (less adoption in new technology on hired/leased land), approach of introducing the technology (preference of participatory bottom up approach), and motivation and the involvement of farmers from conceptualization to implementation are factors that impact adoption of technologies between farmers. Unsustainable cultivation in catchments and destruction of water sources in Tanzania is limiting the flow of water on which some of water use technologies directly depend. In some areas where farmers and pastoralists co-exist, conflicts always arise from grazing on farmland, with destruction to water infrastructure. In recognition of the need for sustainable management of land and water, and the increasing conflicts over use of resources by different sectors, Tanzania has enacted several policies. The irrigation policy calls for the improvement of irrigation water use efficiency and effectiveness by promoting closed conduit systems and high efficiency methods such as drip irrigation and promotion of efficient water utilization technologies such as the System of Rice Intensification. There is need for harmonization and linkage of land and water management and the policies to avoid conflicts. Whereas for example the customary land law recognizes the right to land entailing some resources therewith, the water law does not recognize such customary right by granting the ownership right to water by the owner of land on which the water resource is found. There is need for adequate mechanisms for enforcing policies, regulations and by-laws. Local water governance institutions such as water user associations are important for sustainable scaling of land and water technologies. Horizontal and vertical scaling of the land and water technologies depends on factors such as facilitation of registration of water user associations and empowering them; implementing projects based on actual ground conditions for ease of adoption by communities; and involvement of the local government. Strengthening linkages between relevant institutions and their respective roles and responsibilities also require to be clearly defined. Promotion of land and water technologies should not be gender-blind but rather ensure participation of women and youth in the training and implementation. An integrated systems approach is needed to address the multi-faceted challenges in sustainable land and water management, and a focus on the entire value chain activities; from input supply to output market

Out of Africa

Panel: Age of Migration, Diaspora, Exile (II

Colonialism and sexuality, in Tayeb Salih’s season of migration to the north and Peter Kimani’s dance of the Jakaranda.

AbstractThe Sudanese author, Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and the Kenyan author, Peter Kimani’s Dance of the Jakaranda both interrogate the connection between colonialism and sexuality in an African setting. While the protagonist in Salih’s novel, Mustafa Sa’eed is the epitome of the sexualized, colonized Sudanese subject, Kimani’s novel examines several sexual relationships, including those of Sally McDonald, the British wife of a colonial administrator in Kenya, Ian McDonald. In Kimani’s novel, Sally McDonald represents a counter image to the white woman in need of protection from the sexual appetites of colonized males. Though Salih’s narration exemplifies the colonial stereotype of the hypersexual black male through Sa’eed’s sexual exploitations of British women, it is also a critique of colonial rule and of responses to colonial rule in Africa. However, Kimani’s critique of colonial rule calls into question the notion of the colonized male without sexual control by making Sally McDonald, the image of sexual license. It is in this vein that this article explores the commonalities between the two novels and the way they use sexual exploitation by opposing figures within colonial settings to address different responses to colonial rule

Dose selection in seamless phase II/III clinical trials based on efficacy and toxicity

Seamless phase II/III clinical trials are attractive in development of new drugs because they accelerate the drug development process. Seamless phase II/III trials are carried out in two stages. After stage 1 (phase II stage), an interim analysis is performed and a decision is made on whether to proceed to stage 2 (phase III stage). If the decision is to continue with further testing, some dose selection procedure is used to determine the set of doses to be tested in stage 2. Methodology exists for the analysis of such trials that allows complete flexibility of the choice of doses that continue to the second stage. There is very little work, however, on optimizing the selection of the doses. This is a challenging problem as it requires incorporation of the dose-response relationship, of the observed safety profile and of the planned analysis method. In this thesis we propose a dose-selection procedure for binary outcomes in adaptive seamless phase II/III clinical trials that incorporates the dose response relationship, and explicitly incorporates both efficacy and toxicity. The choice of the doses to continue to stage 2 is made by comparing the predictive power of the potential sets of doses which might continue to stage 2

Uniformly minimum variance conditionally unbiased estimation in multi-arm multi-stage clinical trials

Multi-arm multi-stage clinical trials compare several experimental treatments with a control treatment, with poorly performing treatments dropped at interim analyses. This leads to inferential challenges, including the construction of unbiased treatment effect estimators. A number of estimators unbiased conditional on treatment selection have been proposed, but are specific to certain selection rules, may ignore the comparison to the control and are not all minimum variance. We obtain estimators for treatment effects compared to the control that are uniformly minimum variance unbiased conditional on selection with any specified rule or stopping for futility

Emergent Endovascular Management of Acute Arterial Bleeding after Initial Unsuccessful Surgical Control

Background: Hemorrhage and the complications thereof have traditionally been managed surgically but over the last two decades endovascular techniques have been increasingly used. These include coiling, liquid and particle embolization among others. These minimally invasive techniques now available locally are safe and cost effective. They are however yet to be fully adopted in acute emergency settings. Methods: Fifty two patients with acute bleeding from known causes and whose first surgical intervention was not successful in controlling the bleeding were referred for emergent endovascular embolization. Results: The causes of the bleeding included post traumatic bleeds from intra-abdominal organ injury, iatrogenic pseudoaneurysms, massive hemoptysis among others. There was 100% technical and clinical success rate in hemorrhage control. None of the patients required a repeat endovascular procedure for bleeding control and no major complications were reported. Conclusion: Endovascular embolization was successful in controlling bleeding in all of the patients. It is effective, safe and available as a first line choice. It should be considered in all patients presenting with severe hemorrhage from known causes in the initial presentation.Key words: Embolization, Interventional radiology, Vascula

Trends of armed conflict in Kenya from 1997 to 2021: an exploratory data analysis

Armed conflict patterns have drastically changed since the post-cold war period. In Sub-Saharan Africa, armed conflict continues to be persistent and on the rise. Kenya has not experienced civil war, but has experienced intra-state conflicts which display themselves as political, natural resources, ethnicity, land, and environmental conflicts. This study aimed to identify patterns and trends of armed conflict in Kenya. Secondary data from Armed Conflict and Location Events Data (ACLED) for the period 15th January 1997 to 25th February 2021 was used. Exploratory data analysis and generalized additive model were used to identify patterns and trends. For the period studied, 7,437-armed conflict events and 11,071 fatalities were recorded. There was a non-linear trend and a general increase in the number of armed conflict cases in Kenya. The peaks in the non-linear trend were observed during the years 2002, 2007, 2013 and 2017. On the contrary, the number of fatalities from armed conflict decreased over time and had a non-linear trend, with peaks in the years 1998, 2001, 2007, 2013 and, 2017. Similarly, there was a reduction in the number of fatalities per armed conflict over time with 149 fatalities per 100-armed conflict events recorded in the study period. Linear and non-linear trend of armed conflict events was observed at the county levels, with counties like Nairobi and Nakuru having a non-linear trend similar to the overall trend. The number of events of armed conflict for riots and protests event type had a non-linear trend while the rest had a linear trend with a positive slope. Violence Against Civilians (VAC) event type had the highest number of events followed by Riots and Protests. Additionally, VAC had the highest number of fatalities followed by Battles and Riots. In terms of fatalities per armed conflict, Explosions/Remote violence event type had the highest fatality rate followed by Battles and VAC. The peaks in the number of armed conflict cases and fatalities were observed in the years in which general elections were conducted in Kenya

Estimation after subpopulation selection in adaptive seamless trials

During the development of new therapies, it is not uncommon to test whether a new treatment works better than the existing treatment for all patients who suffer from a condition (full population) or for a subset of the full population (subpopulation). One approach that may be used for this objective is to have two separate trials, where in the first trial, data are collected to determine if the new treatment benefits the full population or the subpopulation. The second trial is a confirmatory trial to test the new treatment in the population selected in the first trial. In this paper, we consider the more efficient two-stage adaptive seamless designs (ASDs), where in stage 1, data are collected to select the population to test in stage 2. In stage 2, additional data are collected to perform confirmatory analysis for the selected population. Unlike the approach that uses two separate trials, for ASDs, stage 1 data are also used in the confirmatory analysis. Although ASDs are efficient, using stage 1 data both for selection and confirmatory analysis introduces selection bias and consequently statistical challenges in making inference. We will focus on point estimation for such trials. In this paper, we describe the extent of bias for estimators that ignore multiple hypotheses and selecting the population that is most likely to give positive trial results based on observed stage 1 data. We then derive conditionally unbiased estimators and examine their mean squared errors for different scenarios