The Development Dilemma

Mary Njeri, Minoo Kyaa and Wanjira Wanjiru are three brave, powerful and caring women that are part of the Organic Intellectuals Network, a group composed of members who live in informal settlements like Mathare and work towards the betterment of their community. They present their chapters from the book, Breaking the Silence on NGOs in Africa by the Organic Intellectuals Network, which can be found here: https://darajapress.c...

Live from Nairobi, I was joined by three great panelists, Caroline Teti from GiveDirectly, Tom Wein from IDinsight and Kanyi Wyban from Mathare Green Movement to tackle three questions: what is dignity? why should people care about dignity in aid? what does it mean to implement aid with more dignified?

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In Part 2 of my conversation with Professor Funmi Olonisakin we explore how the global security interests perpetuate colonial approaches in Africa, and Funmi also up about her experiences as a black woman in UK academia and the power of the decolonising and black lives movements.

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This episode is a conversation about power, how it is created, enforced and could be disrupted by young African leaders. I was honoured to host Professor Funmi Olonisakin, an activist at heart from her days of student protest in Nigeria, a Professor of Security, Leadership and Development at King's College London and a founding Director of the African Leadership Centre (ALC). http://funmiolonisakin.com/

We delve into why Funmi...

We hear the term 'White Saviourism' and think it only applies to the egregious examples we see on Social Media but it applies much broader to include brown saviours, many development institutions, certain forms of Western knowledge and perhaps even you!

Themrise Khan, Dickson Kanakulya and Maïka Sondarjee have put together a great book to address this, White Saviorism in International Development: Theories, Practices and Lived...

It is a real honour to bring to you my discussion with Ruth Levine, the CEO of IDinsight - a research and advisory organization that works with global development leaders to improve their social impact.

As an organisation with 6 offices spread across 5 regions in Africa and Asia, I think Ruth is keenly aware of the complexities of cultural differences and sensitivities and how they impact meaningful collaboration. So in this episode...

This is Part Two of my discussion with Shiro and Phuthi, two African students at the University of Stanford. If you haven't listened to Part 1, I would recommend giving it a listen first. Here we explore Shiro and Phuthi's internal struggles at work balancing competing priorities of justice for fellow Africans with pursuit of personal goals; what more expats and those workplaces should do to address this trade-off and fin...

Shiro Wachira and Phuthi Tsatsi are two brilliant African graduate students at the University of Stanford, with plenty of experience in development organisations in Kenya and South Africa. But after time with both, they are quite disillusioned. Why have they found Stanford at times disappointing and a hard place to be? Why do they no longer want to work in development organisations? In this Part 1 of 2, we tackle this and more!

Inst...

The Kenyan technology ecosystem is growing rapidly, countless new startups emerge and multinationals keep pouring in. What is the history of this space? Where did it come from and who benefits from the system today? In other words, who is overlooked and what needs to change?

Angela Okune & Leo Mutuku bring their experiences as tech entrepreneurs, researchers as well as founding members of the Ihub to a paper they recently wrote ...

What are the challenges in Kenyan-Expat friendships? What are the inequities in the Kenyan-Expat romantic relationships? What do we need to be more aware of? 

This episode with Alexandria Njenga and Conor Walsh comes from a live panel event held on March 10th in Nairobi. It was a fun event where Alex & Conor brough nuance to this sensitive topic and their critiques. Enjoy this episode and if you know a friend who is in such a re...

This podcast with Jim Chuchu comes from the panel event held in Nairobi on the topic 'Let's talk about Inhabiting Injustice'. This was a powerful, hard and uncomfortable conversation - the kind I hoped for when starting this podcast. It is thought-provoking and worth discussing with others - come to my next panel event on March 10th to do so. Many thanks to Jim for tackling this with me!

Check out the show n...

This episode features Dr. Wangui Kimari. Wangui wears many hats and I know her best for her role as a key part of establishing and supporting the Mathare Social Justice Centre (referred to as MSJC) in Nairobi. MSJC began in 2014 by young members of the community to promote social justic in an area of Nairobi where residents face many daily forms of violence from forced evictions, police abuse to extrajudicial killings. They are inv...

This episode comes from the first live event for this podcast on the 3rd of October (as a result the sound quality varies). This was a great panel discussion event with Lorraine (from episode 1) and Sarika (episode 4) where we discussed some of the reasons it is so hard to have this discussion in the first place. It was lively and was followed by even more engagement in the following unrecorded break-out rooms. Based on this energy...

The aid system needs a revolution but criticising it requires nuance. In this episode, I speak with Arbie Baguios. As the founder of the initiative Aid Re-imagined and as a vocal critique of the aid industry on social media, he is a leading voice in the decolonisation movement. At the same time, Arbie walks the line between critiquing the ills of international actors and also pushing for constructive change with them.

Building on th...

In this episode, I wanted to bring in a perspective from the private sector because the challenge of running multi-cultural teams of foreigners and nationals is not limited to the development sector. I speak with Shakeel Hassanali who is the Managing Director of JW Seagon - an international insurance broker with offices in Kenya. 

We explore the mistrust and bias he faced when he arrived and how collectively, they managed to build a...

Why is there a Gap between Expats and Kenyans in the social and work space? What consequences does this have for our work and collaboration? What can we do to change this?

In this episode, I explore these questions with Vandana Thottoli. Vandana is an Indian who has lived in Kenya for 7 years, forming close friendships with both Expats and Kenyans and in so doing straddling the gap between them. From an Indian background, she has so...

Only 6% of Kenyan start-ups in 2019 that received over 1m USD of funding were led by locals. It is clear the investing space is disproportionately skewed to expats whilst local entrepreneurs seem to be crowded out. In this discussion with Efayomi Carr, we explore in detail why the ecosystem of funders, investors and entrepreneurs leads to this and what needs to change. We discuss the bias towards trusted networks but also why Efayo...

Sarika Bansal is an editor and storyteller, I first came across her work in the BRIGHT Magazine which you hear referenced frequently on this podcast. As founder & editor-in-chief, they told fresh, solutions-oriented stories about social change which I learnt a lot from and would highly recommend to check it out.

As I admired her work with BRIGHT Magazine and writings, it was a real honour to have her on the podcast. One particul...

In this episode, Marion shares her perspective of how expats like myself should come to Kenya, with a mentality of doing work rather than helping. With this, expats shouldn't feel any guilt to enjoy the beauties of Kenya but at the same time, they then should be held accountable for this. 'We tried' isn't good enough.

We also delve into the different treatment of expats and Kenyans in the workplace, how...