The Star News Brief gives you a summary of the stories making headlines in Kenya today and offers you a glimpse of what to expect in tomorrow's newspaper.
Uhuru to market BBI to Mt Kenya in Sagana meeting
As debate on his grip on Mt Kenya continues to swell, President Uhuru Kenyatta is set to host a Central Kenya leadership meeting at the Sagana State Lodge this weekend. The meeting comes just days after he addressed the Kikuyu nation through vernacular stations urging the region to support the Building Bridges Initiative.
The meeting in Sagana is supposed to bring together local leaders with the president expected to continue his campaign for BBI. Uhuru is also expected to explain his political vision for the region. There is growing concern that Uhuru has lost his grip on the region with many residents opposed to his idea of amending the Constitution through BBI.
Inside wheelbarrow party grand roadmap to 2022
United Democratic Alliance party is set to roll out a road map that will see it spread its tentacles across the country and “become the party of choice” ahead of the 2022 poll. The party which is touted could be Deputy President William Ruto’s State House vehicle in the race to succeed President Uhuru Kenyatta is set to be formally unveiled late February or early March.
Between April and June, UDA is expected to conduct elections of officials from grassroots to the national level. The Star has established that the party that has taken the Jubilee strongholds by storm has 81,273 fresh applicants seeking to be enrolled in the new outfit. Majority of them are said to be from Nairobi, Mt Kenya, Rift Valley, North Eastern, Coast and parts of Ukamba, Western and Kisii region where Ruto now enjoys a seizable amount of support.
Divorce cases scar children, evoke calls for mediation
Family is the most basic unit of a society and it is beautiful. It is the safe place when all else fails. However, when family relations break down, the aftermath is ugly. And children tend to bear the brunt. They suffer emotional, psychological and physical trauma.
Though family disputes have always been in Kenyan courts, the past one year has had a surge in matrimonial cases, with a worrying number of children dragged to court as a result. The escalation has been blamed on disputes in families on Covid-19, the sudden loss of jobs and closure of schools. This placed a huge unprecedented social and economic pressure on many homes and brought about a lot of tension. Domestic violence cases shot up.
Most Kenyan deaths in 2020 were never recorded
The number of deaths that were recorded by the department of Civil Registration Services in 2020 stands at 39 percent. The department has termed the numbers as too low noting that tens of deaths from Covid-19 last year could have gone unrecorded. To address this, the CRS, Ministry and health and WHO have launched a Rapid Mortality Survey in six pilot counties to establish the real number of deaths caused by the virus.
This emerged when CRS embarked on a training campaign targeting members of the provincial administration who have been keen in recording the deaths at grassroots levels. According to CRS Secretary Ms Janet Mucheru, the exact number of people who died in the country from the pandemic was not known.
40% of Kenyans living in extreme poverty - Report
The World Bank State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 shows that more than forty percent of Kenyans currently live in extreme poverty. The level of poverty is approximately 10 times higher than in Pakistan and Egypt which are also categorised as lower-middle income economies. Zambia is the poorest with 61 per cent of its citizens living in poverty followed by Nigeria at 58 per cent while Côte d'Ivoire is fourth at 30 per cent.
Zimbabwe has a low poverty rate of 23 per cent but has a high poverty headcount at almost 80 per cent of its population. Outside Africa, India has the highest poverty rate at 22 per cent taking seventh place, followed by Bangladesh at 20.5 per cent.