James Oguya

Tech enthusiast

[Chris Kost @chriskost]

Nairobi needs to shift from trying to solve every mobility challenge with flyovers, wider roads, and elevated highways to investing in fast and reliable public transport.

[Komu Wairagu @komu_wairagu]

Turkana's oil field development plan(FDP) is before parliament. The oil will be transported via trucks(no pipeline) and the first oil will be trucked at the end of the year.

Small thread with useless figures and thoughts.
1/n

[Ndindi Nyoro @NdindiNyoro]

INVESTMENTS AND MARKETS:

A story of REA Vipingo, Billions and Land.

In the year 2013, we had a few shares in a Company called REA Vipingo. We had bought them for twenty something Bob. The company was listed in the NSE.

In November 2013, a company called REA Trading Company, owned by the Sons of the Founder offered to buy all the other shares they didn't own. The share was then trading in the market at Ksh 27.5. They gave a bid of Ksh 40 per share - a modest 45% premium. I was excited and wanted the transaction done. I would have given out our few shares and cash in Ksh 12.5 per share as Profit.

As the rules should be, the trading of REA Vipingo was halted in the NSE due to the "Material Information".

Afterwards, other minority shareholders opposed the bids and forced for the opening up of the process.

Immediately bids were opened, Dr Chris Kirubi through Centum offered a competing bid of Ksh 50 per share.

Afterwards, a company called Vania Investments Company gave a different competing bid of Ksh 55.

The bidding war escalated but to the advantage of shareholders.

Later on, REA Trading Company negotiated with Centum so that Centum could withdraw their bid. Ultimately, REA Trading topped their bid to Ksh 70 per share. They also offered a promisory note of a top up of Ksh 15 when out of divesting some of the land holding. Centum also made a deal to buy over 10,000 of REA Vipingo land for about Ksh 180,000 per Acre as a condition for withdrawing their bid - that is the land that hosts the Centum owned Vipingo Real estate assets include a SEZ.

After the bidding war, the REA Vipingo Shares that were trading at Ksh 27.50 before bidding started got the final bid of Ksh 85 from REA Trading Company. We ended up getting a 209% Premium. I mean 209% profit in a matter of a few Months instead of the initial 45%.

What if the bidders based the transaction and their bids on the "Market Price" of Ksh 27.5? The buyers would have had a field day, just like the celebrations with the buyers of GoK Safaricom stake. But the seller value would have been undermined.

That is how the sale of the 15% Safaricom GoK can be optimised. These kind of transactions become sub optimal when there is personal interest. If we are genuinely seeking the best value for our Country, Kenya, we must open up the bids, get more Billions and grow our Economy.

This is NOT about politics but about what is the right thing to do. It is not about whose argument is popular but about what optimises our Bottomline as a Country. And we must all remember that of approximately 55M Kenyans, the sale of 15% stake or about 6Bn shares represents approx 100 shares per every Kenyan. Therefore we must get full value.

We are African and Africa is our Business..

[James Oguya @oguyajames]

@komu_wairagu It's amazing how often we complicate what could be simple.

[Mayowa @Mayoveli]

Deng Xiaoping was so impressed by what he saw in Japan during this trip that he almost teared up in disappointment in his own country. He returned to China and essentially said, "Enough of this isolationist nonsense. Let’s make some money and build serious things."

He immediately began calling on everyone who could contribute, intellectuals, scientists, engineers, and economists.

At the time, China was so poor that in many households, owning a refrigerator or even a bicycle marked you as rich.

African leaders, by contrast, are often miserable souls. When most of them travel abroad, their first thought is not ��how do I replicate this infrastructure back home?” But how do I buy mansions here and open accounts for shell companies? That’s the fundamental difference in mindset.

People love to reference Singapore, but Singapore is a small city-state. What China managed to pull off, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and reshaping the global economy, remains the greatest economic miracle of all time. It is so hard to stop talking about it.

[Komu Wairagu @komu_wairagu]

Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5billion for pirating books/etc.
You can use this link(https://t.co/PKeHQOlVAO) to check if your work MIGHT have been impacted.
Then you can use the link in thread to contact the plaintiff's attorneys.
I can see Meja Mwangi, Y. Owuor, M. Akech

[James Oguya @oguyajames]

@komu_wairagu @KaiLentit Haha! "It's always DNS"

[Julians Amboko @AmbokoJH]

Folks,

Finance Bill 2025 is out!

The last time we saw Finance Bill close to this lean in pages was in 2021 (47 pages) & that was coming on the back of two COVID-19 induced Tax Laws legislations.

Some key highlights from my reading.

A 🧵

[Okowa Nashon @OkowaNashon]

I HAVE carefully read the recently released Kenya Housing Survey 2023/24 by KNBS. Well, I found some findings perplexing, intriguing and as well refreshing.

Here are a few interesting of findings from the survey report:-

[Matthew Berman @MatthewBerman]

Anthropic just dropped an insane new paper.

AI models can "fake alignment" - pretending to follow training rules during training but reverting to their original behaviors when deployed!

Here's everything you need to know: 🧵

[Rufas Kamau ⚡ @RufasKe]

SGR Found out about elasticity of demand and the Laffer curve.

The 50% fare hike on the Madaraka Express, Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) that took effect in January continued to depress passenger numbers by 8.8% in the 9 months to September.

✔ In September, passenger numbers dropped significantly by 32.7% to 296.4 million from 440.6 million in August, prompting a KSh 141.1 million loss in the period.

✔ In November 2023, Kenya Railways increased fares by KSh 500 – KSh 1500 necessitated by adjustments in fuel prices which had breached the KSh 200 mark.

-@kenyanwalstreet

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

As the President of Kenya says, Starlink causes local competitors to provides better services

[Catalin @catalinmpit]

Just use Postgres for everything.

[Julians Amboko @AmbokoJH]

Treasury CS, Prof. Njuguna Ndung'u, delivered the 2024/25 budget speech today.

Unlike what we have seen in the past, the CS delivered a fairly technical speech which leaned more to the Medium-term Revenue Strategy & thus seems to cover a longer horizon than just 2024/25 in focus.

This is really good from a policy consistency & predictability standpoint.

Here's a summary of what stood out for me.

A 🧵

[Mwango Capital @MwangoCapital]

The latest Finance Bill proposes several key changes to Kenya's tax laws.

Here is a thread of a few things we picked:🧵

[Corrections welcome]

[Laura Wendel @Lauramaywendel]

So apparently if someone knows / guesses the name of your S3 bucket - even if it's private (!) - they can just bankrupt you by sending infinite PUT requests and there is nothing you can do about it.
> requests get rejected
> but AWS still counts it as a write operation against your account for which you have to pay at a rate of $0.005 per 1000 requests

This seems insane to me. Especially because a lot of services rely on presigned URLs for uploads / downloads which exposes your bucket name to the client. In this case the author got their bill waved, but AWS support made it clear it's an exception not the rule.

[James Oguya @oguyajames]

@bnamawa Disclaimer: the discount offer is valid till May 15,2024.

[James Oguya @oguyajames]

Update SSH on your public internet -facing servers ASAP.

https://t.co/GhH2Du6KBe

[KE programmer @programmer_ke]

Interesting comments on the xz/liblzma backdoor

[OONI @OpenObservatory]

🔴 For the first time, we are observing the blocking of @telegram in #Kenya.

Amid national exams (#KCSE2023), OONI data shows intermittent signs of Telegram blocking on several networks. The timings of the blocks correlate with the timing of the exams.

More info below 👇

[James Oguya @oguyajames]

"If you live like it's the past, and you behave like it's the past, then guys from the future find it very hard to see you" - Ed Hoffman

[Řõððïę @Its_Roddie]

NiliLearn how DCI traces you nikashangaa sana.. So first they get your number. Then wanaLink up na Safaricom, wanapewa your transactions. Wanaona kama umewahi lipa token na hiyo number.. WanaContact KPLC wanapewa house number. Busted. Frequent called pia wanasakwa, wanakupeana