Every time a gadget that has memory is shipped into Kenya, the government of Kenya imposes a tax on it above the ordinary import tax. This tax on memory alias blank tape levy was enacted by amending the Kenya Copyright Act of 2001 in the Copyright (Amendment) Act of 2022.

The underlying logic of the levy is that any memory device will at one point hold copyrighted material. Since one has to pay for using or copying copyrighted material, the government makes you pay for this usage even before you buy the device. The money is then distributed by MCSK to registered members. How the distribution works, only the govt knows.

As of 2025, the government had accumulated Ksh 150 million of this money.

The good news is that copyright holders get to earn money they didn’t work for. The bad news is that memory becomes expensive. Imagine with today’s computer memory prices skyrocketing, the government imposing a tax to benefit bureaucrats to the detriment of citizens.

The tax affects the prices of phones, tablets, HDDs, SSDs CDs and any ICT gadgets with the capacity to record or store music and audio-visual works.

Anyway, now you know.

Enjoyed my mzee thoroughly. She's 62 years old. Made 1964.

Btw, she's using her original 6v points. no battery. wiring and engine restoration done by yours truly. self taught mech from scratch.

I was watching a nostalgic video on Safaricom's YouTube page about The TEAMS Effect and it took me straight back to the early 2000s.

Remember when downloading a 3MB MP3 song could take 30 minutes? You'd sit there watching the download bar crawl across the screen hoping nobody picked up the house landline and killed the connection.

Then there was playing Road Rash on a massive CRT monitor that was running on a Pentium II or Pentium III. Windows Media Player. JetAudio. CD burners. Floppy disks. And if you were really lucky then you had an internet connection at home.

My dad worked at an institution where they had a 1.44 Mbps satellite connection and I'd only get to enjoy this crazy speeds over the weekend or during public holidays.

Today, one person in an apartment can pay around KSh 5,400 for a 150 Mbps fiber connection and use it to do serious work, watch AI slop videos or download a 32GB game without giving it a second thought.

Shoutout to the late His Excellency Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki CGH, Hon. EGH Mūtahi Kagwe, Amb. Prof. Elijah Bitange Ndemo, and Hon. EGH Dr. Amos Mūhìnga Kìmunya for helping lay the foundations of Kenya's digital transformation by cutting through bureaucracy, rallying their teams, and backing the infrastructure that moved us from roughly 10 Mbps of international bandwidth in the mid-2000s to more than 28 Tbps today.

Off course this transformation was/is powered by massive investments in undersea connectivity, including SEACOM, TEAMS, EASSy, PEACE, LION2 and DARE1 alongside other cable systems and the terrestrial fibre networks connecting them to the rest of the country.

What are your craziest memories of the internet or computers back in the day? Is your old go-to cyber café still around?

I rarely find any statement that starts like this that doesn't end up being tribal or stereotyping a group.

I also think the moment to mention a person's tribe in an argument then you are part of the problem.

People tribes are part of their identity, so if you make a statement about a person then the statement will be felt by all members of that tribe by proxy.

Lastly, you cant fight tribalism with tribalism. Its stupid and counter productive to even try. A person making tribal statement about your tribe wont be quelled by you making tribal statements about their tribe.

So we've decided to become South Africans? Tackling illegal immigration is not the issue. It's how you do it. Going up to a Burundian hawker, beating them up and destroying their stall does what exactly?? Has your Mpesa balances increased? That job you applied for have they called to say you got the job? Has the economy suddenly sky rocketted? Burundians are the least problematic people in this country.

Oh but the Chinese immigrants that own some of the biggest cooperations that beat and underpay Kenyans you don't say anything about them? This country is so backwards. Ruto opens his mouth to talk shit like he always does and we just eat it up. What the actual fuck is going on?

I recently accepted a bad deal when buying something in the name of "supporting a family member." A quick google search had 80% of listings for the item selling cheaper than what he was asking for. I kinda feel guilty and not guilty at the same time, if that makes sense.

What would you have done in this situation?

Nilisikia other banks you can get loans even with CRB listing. James Mwangi is showing me dust due to HELB CRB listing. Naona nyama kwa kioo

My scooter is old, its beat-up and rusty. Its exactly how i want it to be. I love it's honesty. I try to show that am enjoying it the way it is. am having a blast. I will keep it that way. No new paint ever, that i promise her.

You don't have to feel inferior because you don't have shiny paint. I just want to enjoy the experience and maybe motivate someone else to get anything they like running. ride it. time is now.

I feel so liberated with this vespa and the condition it is in, in its barn-find state. that nothing ever comes close to this experience. I've always loved old things and old tech. things that have their true character still attached to them.

Would i sell? No.

The monetary value has never been there with me on my old scooters. many people ask, what is its worth to me? I don't know. To me it is worth a lot or it can be zero money, i don't care. But the enjoyment behind it is so great. I couldn't see myself parting with it. I don't know what i'd do with the money. where would i get such similar thing?

Hey hey 😊 Would anyone happen to know if Ulinzi Sports Complex is open to the general public on weekdays? Especially the track And if so, do you know what the opening hours are? And entrance fees.

Thank you

I'm thinking of taking a vocational course, but I'm honestly not sure which one would be a good investment. For those who have experience in different vocational fields, ni course gani mnaona ziko in demand right now, either in Kenya or internationally? Hospitality, electrical, plumbing to mention but a few

I'd really appreciate your opinions and personal experiences.

So guys, leo nataka mnipatie connections zenu za kutoka block. 😂

And please, for the love of God, msiniletee “work hard,” “be patient,” “nothing comes easy,” “Kenya hakuna pesa,” “hii ni hard-earned money” and all those motivational speeches.

I know.

I also know that Kenya is not one uniform economic experience.

I have seen some of the estates you people live in. I have seen the cars parked in those compounds. Someone wakes up and casually buys a KSh 20–40 million car. Someone else is comfortably paying KSh 150K+ rent. Kids are in schools whose fees would make the average Kenyan need to sit down first. And while one school is doing well, another newer, shinier, more exclusive one is already coming up.

So no, I refuse to participate in the collective performance that everyone is suffering.

There is money here.

There is access here.

There are rooms in this country where very different conversations about money, business, opportunity and influence are happening.

And I want to know some of the people having those conversations.

Not because I am greedy.

I am actually very clear about what I bring to the table. I am loyal. I am smart. I am intuitive. I am ambitious. I think deeply. I see patterns. I have ideas. I know how to build things. And perhaps most importantly, I am curious.

I also understand something about wealth: the truly wealthy rarely need to announce themselves.

They are not necessarily the loudest people online. They are not always showing up in every social circle. Some of them are deliberately invisible.

And honestly? So am I.

So to the people reading this who have access to those rooms, those networks, those conversations and those opportunities.

I am not asking you to give me money.

I am asking you to give me proximity.

Introduce yourself. Invite me for a conversation. Let us sit somewhere and talk. Tell me what you're building. Ask me what I am building. Challenge my ideas. Perceive my mind.

Give me one opportunity to be in the room.

Then decide whether I belong there.

Because perhaps the thing separating some of us from the lives we imagine isn't a lack of intelligence, ambition or ability.

Perhaps we simply haven't met the right people yet.

So, wenye mko na connections za kutoka block.

indulge me. Test the waters.

I have a feeling I might be worth knowing....

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

Regards.

A Girl with a Dream.

You know that feeling of getting home and feeling intense back pain? Someone might think you were doing heavy manual labor on a construction site, when in reality, you were just sitting on a swivel chair helping clients all day.

​Over the past month, I formed a small group to walk home with after work. My place is about a 30-minute walk from the office, so walking makes sense for me. The rest of the group walks part of the way before boarding a matatu or a tuktuk.

​Eventually, the group splits up until it's just two of us: a certain Coast girl and me. Every day when she reached her stage to board a tuktuk, she’d give me a hug goodbye. It became such a set routine that even the local tuktuk and boda boda guys started making comments whenever they saw it.

​A couple of days ago, another girl joined our walking group. The Coast girl was on her phone and walking ahead at a faster pace. When we reached the junction where I usually pick my path home, I decided to take Route B with the new girl instead of Route A with the Coast girl.

​I didn't think much of it, but today, the Coast girl brought it up and complained that I abandoned her for someone else. Corporate drama unfolds in the most unexpected ways.

Anyway I've been having back aches when I get home. I need a remedy or just how to avoid getting back pains totally. My work involves sitting for almost 7+ hours. Any tips?

Meeeehhhhn. The average quality of users has gone off a cliff since 2017.💀😭🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️😭

Wtf happened?😭🤣

I am helping someone make choices for some schools they want to enrol in within this CBC system, and it is confusing to say the least. Particularly that I have to first understand the concept, from the basics like pathway, track, clusters, placement, etc., as if it is a unit from back in university before I can make an educated set of narrower options that they can choose from.

What currently stumps me most is understanding the balance between merit, school capacity and other placement considerations.

To be more specific, my understanding already establishes that the system is cumulative, where it tracks the student's academic progress since the days of primary school, to get a better sense of what set of subjects, or what pathway for that matter, said student is strong in. I would have thought that merit would have been the sole determining factor in placement, but I have actually come to realize that just another factor within the list of pre-requisites towards the placement of students. Frankly speaking, it is quite disorienting that there could be something more to said merit that could make a student competitive. Which could make the selection process on the school’s end somewhat random, even when part of the school’s decision-making process would involve more tangible factors like the learner’s academic capabilities and location.

One possibility I have been wondering about is how the learner's educational environment influences how their learning potential is evaluated, and as such what kind of placement they have. This is a system that I could recognize from the previous 8-4-4 system, with how students from primary schools were, either definitively or speculatively, placed into high school. We could at least establish that students are not accorded the same opportunities from their lower education, given the obvious disparities in resources and staffing; and so having this in consideration, grades do not sufficiently define the learning potential of the student. Perhaps their (the placements) algorithms factor this in while they come up with the placements. I can’t tell though, how neatly this system transfers onto the CBC curriculum.

I am still objective, though, to the fact that the student is capable of getting to their dream career through the school that is best equipped (both materially and exposure-wise) to develop them holistically. And this is based on how outstanding their academic performance is, btw; so don’t come for me for “pressuring the child into something they don’t care for”. I just need some explanation on this from more experienced parents, and probably even teachers, so we don’t end up choosing something that is out of their reach.

My birthday today, and am so grateful to God 🥹 for this milestone. Naskia mzuri, hope y'all have a fantastic day!

Millions of ghost workers every year,billions lost to looting and corruption scandals.

You'd think that they'd offer these millions of ghost worker positions to kenyans.

Apparently not....

Your president (because he sure asf ain't mine)chooses to blame foreigners instead of rooting out the perpetrators.

Even when all the foreigners are gone,under poor leadership you who is a xenophobe champion will still be poor and jobless.This will solve nothing.

Having the phrase"proud and united"in the national anthem has to be satirical.

I see the makings of Congo in Kenya.

For the nerds: chesscom has a family and friends plan that gives you a whole year of diamond for 71% off the price. Costs 6k total, valid for a year and allows up to 6 people. So 1k per person per year
I am looking for 5 people to do this. If interested kindly reach out.

Riddle me this.

Your dad goes to buy milk so your mum's left to fend for you for 20+ plus years. Unfortunately, she succumbs to an illness then suddenly the milk shortage is over and dad wants to have the body to lay it to rest. The mother's brothers give a firm stand that that body isn't going on their lands and are more than eager to hand over to the returned father-figure. The children left behind are daughters whose stand is either to bury on the maternal side or Lang'ata, so Lang'ata since the uncles are not relenting. All because there's claims that the father paid something small during dowry negotiations??????

Maternal aunties(read women) aren't allowed to have a say in this either 🙆🏽‍♀️

To make matters worse, the father wants money raised for the burial to also be given to him alongside the body.

Can the daughters win this one given he was an absent father?

Yesterday I was taking classes from my mother in law, how to make Greek yogurt and mozzarella cheese at home. I didn't know maziwa lala was mozzarella cheese. I remember adding lime juice to make it curd. After that just drain the yellow water in a cheese cloth and knead the white residue to a ball, you'll have your cheese.

Is animal cruelty punishable in our country?

In our neighborhood there's a cat that recently delivered 4 kittens and just recently they have started walking around. One of my neighbors,seemingly pissed that the kittens keep walking on her side of the corridor has started throwing the kittens from the first floor. One is already injured and another is missing. I can't take them in as I live with someone who is mildly allergic but I can't stand seeing cruelty against the kittens. Is there any law that can prevent further cruelty?

Starting a business in Kenya begins with identifying a product or service that people need. Research your target customers, competitors, market prices and the amount of capital required. Next, prepare a simple budget covering stock, rent, licences, marketing and daily operating expenses.

Register your business through the eCitizen portal and obtain the necessary county permits. If you plan to sell physical products, choose reliable wholesalers who offer quality goods at competitive prices. For phone accessories, electrical products, electronics and home appliances, you can explore GEOPA at geopa.co.ke and Good Price Accessories. Both suppliers offer affordable wholesale and retail prices, making them suitable for new and growing businesses.

Start with fast-moving products in small quantities, monitor what customers buy and restock accordingly. Promote your business through WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok and Google Business Profile. Most importantly, provide excellent customer service, keep accurate records and reinvest part of your profits to grow.