Ciri's Life Coach

In a few days, Kenyans will officially have a new constitution. I’m sure many of us have spent a good amount of time in the past weeks learning about our constitution. As a Kenyan, it is my civic duty to recognize the constitutional process and contribute effectively to the discussions. As a capitalist however, I am inclined to think in terms of how the new constitution will affect my pockets and the pockets of my fellow Kenyans. And indeed, the mere thought makes me happy that some want it now and we are saying YES , and others are saying NO and are willing to wait a little longer . All agree we need a NEW constitution! and this is why? Kenya's stock market robust One must understand that the economy, like any other element in a country, is affected by politics.  In any economy, the tell-tale of the economic performance starts with the stock market. Indeed we have a robust stock market that has weathered many political storms. We saw it weather the Mo...

How financially literate are you? Just the other day, I was organizing my book shelf when I saw 'Winners and Loosers of Capitalism and why Africa is not Winning yet by David Ithaya. What a coincidence when I came across an article touching on the same theme 'Africa's mindset'. Anyway, browsing through the pages of the book, I’m saddened by the fact that much of the details of the story is factual but blurry in our memory. I would like to share the theme here. It is quite educative especially on 'personal financing'. Pl do take the time  to read it and hopefully, it will inspire you to become an agent of change for other Kenyans. " Sometime this year after I made a presentation on the stock market to some 200 or so men, I got a question from one of them asking how I could talk about investing money when a lot of Kenyan's lived from hand to mouth. He said that the average Kenyan's concern, was not stocks, bonds, etc but where their next...

After the successful completion and implementation of the Economic Recovery Strategy of 2002, the government was upbeat about economic planning and goal setting and decided to go a notch higher by developing a national Vision to run for over 20 years. It is in the background of that success that the Vision 2030 was developed. FYI: Kenyan GDP was equivalent to that of Singapore in 1970. It is also whispered that the government of Singapore borrowed from Kenya’s plan to develop theirs. While they implemented their plan, Kenya hid hers at the national archives. Today, Singapore’s GDP is about four times that of Kenya. What is Government of Kenya Vision 2030? The Vision 2030 outlines the vision, strategy and key flagship projects to be carried out by the government to achieve the vision. It covers economic, political and social plans for the country by the year 2030. Key areas in the economic sector have been identified for life changing projects.Among these sectors ...

A word of encouragement is to always follow your dreams and trust that all the difficulties you experience in the past until the present will all make sense and have value in our future. And for today, I am sharing with you two speech address; given by Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, to the 2005 graduating class of Stanford and Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, last 2008 in Harvard. Whenever you experience hard times, try and relate to the made speeches and know that it happens for a reason. Try to stay positive and believe that somehow, there’s an opportunity that will come or a lesson that you should learn during these difficulties. Steve Jobs, in he's speech said: "You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever — because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give...

As the adage goes: give someone a program, you'll frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you'll frustrate them for a lifetime :=). I choose to digress a little and talk about Bonita. From how to never moon a werewolf here comes how to charm a 'gawjus' woman. Lets take a scenario of the classic movie 'TOP GUN'. Where Tom handles Kelly..... They have just finished eating dinner, and they are talking. She looks at him and says. "This is going to be complicated", implying that she's falling for him. What would most Kenyan guys do if they were getting a green light like this one? They would quickly make a pass at her and kiss her. Not Tom. He looks at her, then gets up and says, I'm going to take a shower." At first it seems as if he was going to walk into her shower and take it, but ah ah!....he walks out, gets on his bike and rides off. The first time I saw these scenes ages ago, I just thought what a wuss ...

As a Kenyan, why should I be wary of facebook privacy controls? I always get amazed at how naive most of us (facebook users) are when it comes to these controls. Facebook (fb), has made quiet changes to its privacy settings, ones that an 'ordinary' Kenyan needs to understand if they are going to manage the distribution of our personal information. I find Facebook useful, mostly as a way to stay in touch with a select set of my friends and former co-workers. It's not my public soapbox nor a window into my personal life, left open to the world — for that, I have blogs and Twitter. As much as I like Facebook, it has a flaw that I'll never see in my blogs and hopefully never see with Twitter. It seems the proprietors of fb find it necessary, desirable, or profitable to change member privacy settings, usually with little notice to members. In every case I can think of, privacy settings have become more relaxed — more open, if you will. What's be...

Forget all the doomsayers, online banking is safe and extremely useful for managing your money, including any savings account. Just like the name ‘online’ suggests, this is a business carried out purely over the Internet and therefore there is no physical prove of identification which makes it more prone to cases of fraud.Here are some of the sensible precautions that I apply when I use Internet banking. This simple steps involved doesn't require a computer geek rather a savvy PC user. Prevention is your best defense. The best way to keep your PC running smoothly is to prevent problems before they occur. Here are a few tips: # 1 Use Virus Protection If you want to maintain your computer you must use anti-virus protection. Viruses can damage your computer to the point that you have to either restore your computer to previous date or you may even have to reinstall Windows all together. Get a free copy of AVG or Microsoft Security Essentails (MSE) anti-virus. MSE is a sec...