Olivia
Online
Milcah
@MilcahAsamba
Carefree introvert.
Nairobi, Kenya
Joined January 2014
631 Following
291 Followers
11.7K Posts
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EL NINO 2026: EVOLUTION, FORECAST AND POTENTIAL IMPACTS IN KENYA
https://t.co/oc0fRf6kdE
Random Thought... the next voting block that will be gone after Mt. Kenya will be the 3m+ salaried workers.
1. Affordable Housing has entered its 3rd year...
2. ...collected about Ksh. 200 billion from already strained salaried workers, assuming 6.5 b per month...
3. But only completed about 8,000 houses, whose beneficiaries remain largely mysterious. (Personally i am yet to meet anyone who is a beneficiary for these houses)
4. Even at a cost of say 2 m per house, that is 16 billion, its going to be hard to explain where the 200 billion went.
When we argued the levy was not a good idea we were chastised, soon salaried workers will ask for reconciliation. Even audited financials can't be found on the program's website.
"He's a genius," Maya told me later, adjusting her blazer. "People will always try to dim a bright kid's light so they feel taller. Our job is just to buy them bigger lightbulbs."
@GitahiJcgitahi One day people will discuss how Rift valley moved their sons & daughters abroad during Jubilee & UDA govts in droves through Govt scholarships, ministry scholarships ,AFC loans, personal funds through sale of lands previously given by govt, civil servant salaries..epic!
@RufasKe Can he be borrowed for Western please? We don't quite know how to focus. Tukikula tu ka ugali hivi, tuteremshe na chai we loose our dignity. Huyu anaweza saidia
@edwinsifuna
@methumuhia
There’s something so beautiful about the way Black families show up for each other. 🥹❤️
Her mom and sister flew all the way from the U.S. to Paris just to be by her side, helping her through the postpartum journey and welcoming their newest little blessing. This is what love looks like. 🫶🏾👶🏽
Tax update for travellers returning to Kenya from abroad.
Finance Act 2026 has increased the amount of goods you can fly into Kenya with before KRA starts asking for customs taxes.
• Previously, the tax-free limit was USD 300. Or 39,000 shillings.
• Starting 1st July 2026, it is now USD 2,000.
Roughly 260,000 shillings worth of goods.
Meaning,
You can now arrive at JKIA with personal goods worth up to USD 2,000 without paying import VAT tax at the airport.
But you must meet the following conditions.
• The goods must be for your personal or household use.
• You must have been outside Kenya for more than 24 hours.
• They should not be goods meant for trade or resale.
• KRA officers must also be satisfied that the quantity you are carrying is reasonable for personal use.
One more thing.
The USD 2,000 exemption does not give you unlimited alcohol or cigarettes.
The law still limits you to:
• 1 litre of spirits or liquor.
• 2 litres of wine.
• 250 grams of tobacco products (including cigarettes and cigars).
No more putting cracked screen protectors on phones now.
Aftermath of the crazy accident that claimed the 3 young souls along Mbagathi way.
A lot of questions still linger;
1. How did those kids get their hands on their parents cars?
2. How old was the one on the steering wheel?
3. If he was a minor, did the parents report this to the police...because it is illegal for a minor to drive.
4. Who sold these minors alcohol....
and finally, how did that car get up there? Why didn't the first responders try anything to get them out before the fire broke out?
I hope the official investigation report will answer most of these questions.
Terrible accident on Mbagathi Way. A car is on fire on the flyover!!! I can't imagine how fast someone was going to fly off the road onto the flyover! Craziest thing I've ever seen!
In case you missed it yesterday!
I still can't breath! 😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
This guy does not take himself too seriously!
Kenya faces an 84.1% chance of some form of election-related violence during the 2027 General Election, according to a new report by the Kofi Annan Foundation.
Now what do we say about this.
What you are looking at is the current status of the recently commissioned Ngong-Suswa highway....
70kms of road that cost north of 4 billion Kenya shillings (31 million US dollars)
Whom do we blame here?
While Europe is responding to heat waves by buying more air conditioners,
China is deploying infrastructure that cools public space at a fraction of the energy cost.
Rooftops across Shanxi province are fitted with mist nozzles that spray droplets fine enough to evaporate before they hit the ground.
They switch on automatically at 35°C and drop surrounding air temperature by 5 to 8°C within minutes. The same system now runs at bus stops in Chongqing, public squares in Beijing and Wuhan.
The technology is not new. Evaporative cooling is textbook thermodynamics. What is new is that a government decided to fund the rollout at city scale before anyone wrote a policy paper about it.
Money lenders can now call KRA bro.
Because starting 1st July 2026,
Finance Act 2026 has ended one of the biggest tax fights between KRA and money lenders.
For years, banks, microfinances and digital lenders have fought KRA in the Tax Appeals Tribunal and superior courts over one simple question.
A loan has two parts.
• The principal, and
• The interest.
Take for example a lender who gives out a loan of Ksh 1 million. At an interest of Ksh 100,000.
Then the borrower disappears. And all recovery efforts fail.
The lender finally gives up and writes off the loan.
The question is,
• What amount should the lender deduct for tax purposes?
- Is it the principal of 1 million? Or
- The interest of KSh 100,000?
- Or both?
KRA's position has traditionally been,
- Only the interest qualifies as a bad debt deduction. The principal does not.
Money lenders argued the opposite.
- The principal is our stock. That's what we trade with. If the principal is lost, that is a genuine business loss. It is tax deductible.
This disagreement has generated some of the fiercest tax battles between KRA and lenders.
One of the most notable being Branch International Ltd v KRA, involving over Ksh 800 million in loan write offs.
Finance Act 2026 has now settled the war.
• It expressly provides that, for banks, licensed financial institutions, microfinance institutions and money lenders, a bad debt includes:
- The principal.
- The interest.
- And any other amount relating to the debt.
KRA and lenders can finally call each other buddies.
Meanwhile, the professional loan defaulters have entered the chat. They are asking,
So if Tala or Branch writes off my loan as a bad debt, does that mean KRA has carried the burden for me? Should I still repay?
My friends:
This is the conversation that I have been trying to provoke.
To start. Because, we are on our way to hell, in a hand basket. And, it feels like nobody is bothered by that.
Try and make sense of this situation:
Frame 1 shows a delighted @SakajaJohnson - because he just got KSH 2 billion from @WilliamsRuto - to, as he says, fix Nairobi's drainage system.
He wants you to believe that, he has always intended to fix the problem. Problem was, he did not have KSH 2 billion to do it.
Put that aside for a second. There is an attachment that says that the same @SakajaJohnson has wasted KSH 1.2 billion traversing the globe in just one year.
For absolute nonsense.
I have a table attached here - a small sample of these trips.
19 people from his office travelled to Morocco to study "Proactive Management" - whatever the heck that means. At the cost of KSH 37 million.
They are there for two weeks!
There is a trip to the UAE, to study "facilities".
8 people, for a week. The cost is KSH 30 million.
There is a trip to Vancouver BC (Canada) - a fine city for leisure, trust me I have been there many times. The topic of interest is, believe or not, "Conflict Resolution". Cost? KSH 10 million.
Another team heads to Dubai for two weeks - to study, Lord have mercy - "Personal Branding".
Not garbage collection. Not how to use 'common sense". Not "how not to be dumb with taxpayer resources". Not "how to feel shame when wasting billions on nonsense when the county is choking from garbage".
They don't have courses like those.
The desired training is "Personal Branding".
When it is all said and done, KSH 1.2 billion is flashed down the toilet.
This is all done by people who claim to have brains. People who insist on being referred to as "His Excellency and Mheshimiwa.
Since 2014, @NairobiCityGov has wasted KSH 7.7 billion on such stupid endeavours.
KSH 7.7 billion!
So, @SakajaJohnson is out here telling us that he did not fix the drainage issues, because he was waiting on the kindness and generosity of @WilliamsRuto
In the last three years alone, @SakajaJohnson has spent over 55% of the county's revenue on salaries. The legal limit is 35%.
The county of 4.6 million people only employes 0.3% of that population!
This additional 20% is the difference between having a drainage system, and not. Citizens have lost KSH 14.8 billion this way in just the current term.
KSH 14.8 billion that would have been on the table to deal with these needs.
Since devolution - citizens of Nairobi have lost KSH 46.8 billion to the 0.3% of the population in and around government, because of greed.
Because of the County spending on average 51% of every shilling on salaries when the legal limit is 35%.
So understand what am saying here.
(1) - Since 2014, Nairobians have lost KSH 7.7 billion to wasteful travel. 100% wasteful.
(2) Since 2014, the county stole KSH 46.8 billion - from citizens, by spending 51% of revenue on salaries as opposed to a maximum of 35%.
These two infractions have cost Nairobians KSH 54.5 billions.
Can you believe that?
KSH 54.5 billion. Has been stolen, diverted, or wasted on just illegal salaries, and wasteful travel.
But the pain does not stop there.
The county has a legal dpartment, with over 110 lawyers. In 2024-2025, this department cost KSH 530 million to run.
KSH 530 million. But the county owes outside lawyers over KSH 21 billion.
In 2023-2024, the county wasted KSH 6.3 billion - or 20% of the entire budget, on 4 lawyers!
In 2024-2025, another lawyer, billed the county KSH 1.5 billion!
And, listen to what the Auditor General says about this debauchery around legal fees:
And there are quotes verbatim:
(1) Several cases involved repeated changes of advocates and in some instances, two law firms represented the County simultaneously resulting in duplication of costs without justification.
(2) Fee notes were inconsistent or missing. Further, notes were often grossly inflated.
(3) Key supporting documents such as court attendance records, pleadings, rulings and case outcomes were not provided to substantiate payments.
(4) Significant payments, including amounts between Kshs.40,000,000 and Kshs.136,000,000 per case, were made without itemized fee notes or supporting court documentation.
(5) Interest payments arose due to delayed settlement of decretal sums and some legal fee payments were misclassified, obscuring true legal liabilities.
Do you understand the insanity going on in this county?
Since devolution, Nairobi County has spent KSH 309.5 billion.
That's a lot of money.
But the county only devoted KSH 40.9 billion on "development" projects. This entire period.
That is only 13% of the budget. The legal minimum is 30%.
This 17% that is missing, which translates into KSH 51.9 billion, is the reason for the drainage issues, @SakajaJohnson
The KSH 7.7 billion wasted on nonsensical travel, is the reason for the drainage issues.
Friends - when we talk about demanding a certain level of education for office holders, we do it to ensure that people who are handling taxpayer funds understand the relationship between resources, obligations of the government, and the impact of their decisions and their conduct on the government's capacity to meet these obligations.
So, the people of Nairobi - do you see the enormity of the problem on your hands?
The person begging for KSH 2 billion from the National government has wasted KSH 2.1 billion in wasteful travel in just the last two years.
He has stolen KSH 14.8 billion through the salary heist (spending about 55% of budget on salaries in three years).
And I have not said anything about the thousands of ghost workers on payroll.
And worst of all - he has not learnt a damn thing from any of these shenanigans.
It is truly exhausting to have common sense and business sense in this country. It is absolutely torturous to observe this level of dimwittedness from people who turn around a start passing a basket for donations from everyone.
The question is this: who is to blame for this?
Who do we blame for the missing KSH 51.9 billion in missing development?
For the KSH 7.7 billion wasted on nonsensical travel?
Do we blame @SakajaJohnson - who, am sorry to say, is clearly illiterate and cannot for the life of him understand the practical implications of spending 20% of the county's budget on just 4 lawyers in one year?
Do we blame him?
Before you answer that question, ask yourself if you could hire Sakaja to run your one location supermarket.
It has just one location. He applies for a job, and brings to you a diploma from River Road.
You catch him red-handed, and now you know he has no education or experience.
He has never run a kiosk in his life.
But he wants the big job.
And, you gave it to him, when there was a much better option.
This is not about victim shaming. What am trying to do here is to encourage all of us to wake up and start making better decisions.
Because, if we don't, frankly, there is no reason for losing KSH 50 billion on another election next year. Because that election, without better decision making from us, will not fix anything.
@MoGAbdi @FlavNasmbu @NairobiCityGov @NairobiAssembly
🚨 BREAKING: Kenyans are already being targeted by scammers exploiting the new NTSA traffic fines system.
We have come across another case, in addition to the one shared by lawyer Donald Kipkorir, and we've also identified what appears to be a security concern with how NTSA ticket links are generated.
A Kenyan reached out to us after receiving an SMS claiming their vehicle had been captured speeding. The message directed them to make payment through a link.
After clicking it, they were taken to what looked like the NTSA website. But if you look closely at the address bar, the domain is not NTSA's official website. Instead of ntsa . go .ke, it is a completely unrelated domain made up of random characters.
That is a classic phishing website designed to impersonate NTSA.
Then there is the case shared by lawyer Donald Kipkorir. According to his post, his son received a message about a KSh10,000 traffic fine, clicked the payment link and paid, only for the money to end up under another person's name instead of NTSA.
We have been looking into these cases, and here is what we have found.
One possible explanation is that scammers are harvesting vehicle registration numbers and phone numbers that are publicly available online, particularly from platforms used by ride-hailing drivers. They then send convincing fake traffic fine messages and direct victims to cloned NTSA payment pages.
We have also looked into the name that reportedly appeared during one payment. While we cannot conclude who is responsible, our preliminary checks suggest it may belong to a KCB agent. If true, it is possible that the fraudsters used an agent account as part of the money collection process. That is something investigators should verify.
We also noticed something else.
The NTSA ticket link shared in the Kipkorir case appears to use Base64 encoding. Decoding it revealed information such as the ticket number and vehicle registration.
Base64 is not encryption; it simply converts data into another format. If official NTSA links rely only on easily decoded or predictable identifiers without additional safeguards, that could increase the risk of scammers creating highly convincing fake messages. Whether that is an actual security flaw depends on how NTSA's systems validate requests, but it deserves urgent review.
One thing is already clear: scammers are exploiting the traffic fines rollout to target Kenyans.
If you are an Uber, Bolt or taxi driver, or anyone whose vehicle details may be publicly available, you should be extra cautious. Never assume an SMS is genuine simply because it mentions your registration number.
NTSA should urgently strengthen this system. One possible solution would be an official NTSA mobile app where users log in securely before viewing or paying fines.
Another would be allowing payments only through an official Paybill using the ticket number as the account reference, instead of asking people to follow links sent via SMS.
Please share this so more Kenyans don't become victims.
I’ve just watched the Citizen TV report on St. George’s Girls, and I'm sickened.
Students returning to school were cherry-picked for a "drug search" where a female cop searched their breasts and parts, inserting bare fingers WITHOUT GLOVES. Like, why would a cop do this?
Was she not aware of the trauma? The infection risk?
The principal apologized, but how are we hiring police who don't comprehend basic hygiene or human rights?
Kenya must stop recruiting D-grade students and hire college grads on the minimum or teach police basic hygiene. When does this stop?! 🤬
BREAKING: NTSA has released guidelines on how owners of vehicles over 4 years old will comply with the new annual vehicle inspections.
This affects millions of motorists, so kindly share this thread.
1. Inspection fees
Motorcycles
KSh 200 booking fee
KSh 200 inspection fee
Private cars, commercial vehicles and trailers
KSh 1,000 booking fee
KSh 1,000 inspection fee
2. Booking
Once you book, you will be given a date to present your vehicle for inspection.
3. If your vehicle passes
You will receive an inspection report.
An inspection sticker will be placed on your vehicle.
4. If your vehicle fails
You will be given 14 days to fix the defects identified during the inspection.
You will then return for a re-inspection without paying the booking or inspection fee again.
Many Kenyans will view this as an additional annual cost of owning a vehicle, as motorists will now have to pay inspection-related charges each year.
This affects millions of vehicle owners, so kindly share this information to help others stay informed.
Never believe what you see in social media🧐
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