The Postal Corporation of Kenya, PCK or Posta, is the oldest parastatal in Kenya having been founded in 1901 as the Postal Services of British EA (PSBEA).
Over the years however, Posta has faced unending troubles due to corruption and mismanagement.
1/
---A postal thread---
2/ In 1910, PSBEA offered savings accounts and later evolved into Postbank Credit.
In 1994, the bank collapsed with Sh3.8bn in deposits and Sh3.6bn in loans, due to bad debts owed by connected individuals like Cyrus Jirongo.
4/ In 2008, Posta made Sh13.9bn in revenues but by 2017, these had fallen to Sh2.5bn, down 82% in ten years as mail volumes declined from 102mn in 2005 to 47mn in 2018.
Technology had taken over most bread and butter services offered by the corporation.
5/ Curiously though, from 2006 to 2010, the number of unregistered letters sent by Kenyans rose 56%, from 69mn to 108mn before dropping 38% to 67mn in 2015.
It is not immediately clear why mail numbers increased during that period.
6/ Letter box rentals also rose 18% over the nine years from 2006 to 2015, when they numbered 323,000 and have since risen to the current level of 375,000, of a total of 552,000 available boxes.
7/ In 2006, 1.6mn money orders worth Sh4.5bn were paid out, but by 2015, volumes had plunged 69% to 499,000 orders, worth Sh3.2bn. Value per order was higher - Sh6,412 vs Sh2,812.
That year (2015), mobile money services were used to transfer Sh2.8tn across the country.
8/ 20 years ago, Posta had 914 outlets across the country but by 2019, that figure had dropped to 585, even as last mile online order deliveries continues to be a pain point for many e-commerce and courier operators.
What happened to the 329 closed sites is a whole other story.
9/ The parastatal has tried scores of ideas to remain relevant but most of these have been corruption-prone or poorly executed.
One example was VSAT linkages for all post offices in the country, which later turned out to be part of Anglo-Leasing.
10/ Another example was a bus line that was dropped as fast as it was set up.
Posta piloted a two-bus passenger service, Posta Liner, between Nairobi and Busia under the funding and guidance of Universal Postal Union in 2016, to no great success.
12/ In 2018, Posta considered getting into partnership with Amazon and it announced that Amazon officials were set to visit the country later in October of the same year.
No one knows exactly how that went but there seems to be no partnership inked.
13/ Posta even increased its rates in 2017, the firs time in ten years to try and shore up revenues, without a commensurate upgrade in services offerings.
In yet another desperate act, Posta increased rates 65% in August 2020.
15/ The corporation, as expected, also suffers from shameless plunder.
In Dec 2019, Posta was cited for failure to pay Sh159.06mn meant for onward transmission to orphans and persons with disabilities in the year to June 2015.
16/ Apart from 10 properties that the Auditor General singled out as having been grabbed, there's another 45 properties valued at Sh386mn (book, not market value), for which the auditor notes ownership cannot be established.
17/ Over the three years to 2019, the parastatal suffered losses to the tune of Sh3.8 billion and in the just-ended financial year 2019/20, Posta made Sh705.8mn in losses against revenues of Sh2.3bn.
Accumulated losses were at Sh5.9bn as of June 2020.
20/ Posta's Strategic Plan for 2020/21 is a study in hopelessness with an annual revenue growth target of 3%, below current inflation levels, even as it aims to grow the customer base by 15% annually.
Nelson Mandela once declared that Ethiopia held a special place in his imagination.
Indeed, the land of coffee, ancient architecture and a resilient people does carry a certain mystique… and a very long, torturous history.
1/ --Long Thread--
[Pic: Children of the Omo Valley]
2/ See, Mandela spent two weeks in July 1962 in Ethiopia where he learned the tricks of guerilla warfare from Col Fekadu Wakene, a corporal in the riot battalion of the Ethiopian police force at the time.
Mandela was in Ethiopia by invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie I.
3/ At 1.1mn km², a population of 110mn & 80 ethnic groups, Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world, having come into existence circa 980 BCE.
Most intriguing is the nation’s ancient links to Islam, and Christianity, which was declared a state religion in 330 CE.
In 1899, Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness, described events in the Congo as “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience”
Little did he know.
1/ The story of the Congo is one of untold suffering and spectacular plunder.
---Long Thread---
2/ Home to the 2ⁿᵈ largest rainforest (65% forest cover) & 2ⁿᵈ largest river in the world, the DRC is roughly the size of Western Europe with a pop'n of 84mn and a GDP of $50bn.
The value of Congo’s natural resources is estimated at $24tn, greater than the US’ $20tn GDP.
3/ Africa’s 2ⁿᵈ largest country has 10% of the world’s copper, 30% of diamonds, 80% of Coltan, 50% of Cobalt and 12% of hydro-electric capacity.
Mining ($11.6bn) accounted for 95% of exports, 28% of revenue, 20% of GDP & 11% of the workforce in 2016.
1/ When Nairobi started under Ainsworth, the first municipal budget was 7,161 rupees (± Sh150K), which only paid for the uniforms and salaries of 6 Swahili and 8 Indian policemen, 2 sweepers, and oil for street lights.
2/ Called from Machakos to serve as a top civil servant at the swampy town populated more by wild animals than by European settlers, Ainsworth arrived in Nairobi in 1899 at age 25.
Born in 1864 in the UK he died in 1964, at 100 years old.
[Nairobi in 1898]
3/ Prior to his arrival, British land surveyors had already come to Kenya and identified much of the fertile land as “unpopulated” and ripe for colonial settlement.
There was no knowledge among the Europeans of African land ownership, such as the Kikuyu system of gethaka
2/ As soon as the project was approved, they quickly abandoned the PPP and started an international open tender.
The tenders were then crafted in such a way that a select number of local companies were looped in through the backdoor as subcontractors of original manufacturers.
3/ Cabinet Secretary James Macharia, who was in charge of the health docket when the contracts were awarded, and Dr Muraguri, disowned an inflated price list submitted by his successor Sicily Kariuki, according to the parliamentary report. The two gave their own price lists
2/ Anpi Pharma would under-quote to win the tender then after winning, would come back and state:
“freight charges and cost of materials have gone up. I want to vary the tender.”
3/ Before Kemsa, there was the Central Medical Stores ran by a Zachariah Shimechero, a Deputy Commissioner of Police at independence and later the Commissioner of Settlement of Squatters.
In 1972, a shortage of meat forced the govt to license private abattoirs.
In short order, there was an influx of meat, much of which was of dodgy quality.
In 1973, the govt ordered that all meat transport vehicles bear a red stripe for identification.
1/ ---a thread---
2/ It was about the same time that Mohammed Ali Motha, a butcher, and his business partner Abdul Habib Adam, founder of Adam's Arcade, came up with the idea of a Halal slaughterhouse in Ngong under Halal Meat Products Limited.
Adam died in 1974, leaving Halal to the Mothas.
3/ In 1974, Jeremiah Nyagah, the then Agriculture minister approved construction of an abattoir and inspection unit at a cost of Sh9.6mn.
The govt loaned £500,000 (±Sh7mn) but declined to take a stake, a decision that would later prove rather costly.