Kenya has signed an agreement with the Venezuela government to enhance bilateral co-operation between the two countries. The bilateral agreement would also include technical assistance in oil exploration. The deal could also allow Kenya to buy crude oil at lower prices from the South American country, the world’s fifth largest oil exporter. Foreign Affairs minister, Rafael Tuju and Venezuela’s Deputy minister for Foreign Affairs for Africa, Reinaldo Bolivar, signed the agreement in Nairobi.

Key responsibilities of this challenging position based in Nairobi, Kenya will include: the provision of vision and strategic leadership for the Kenya programme (the largest of CCF’s operations with a budget of $10 million) with full operational responsibility; articulating CCF’s vision and mission; designing and implementing a strategic plan to address the causes and effects of poverty and other adverse conditions affecting children in the country. This position will attract a leader with plenty of initiative and extensive high level management experience within an NGO/development context.

The question is so blunt and large, I don't know what to reply. But there's a mic in my face, a TV camera running, a journalist from Citizen TV waiting for my response. We're on the staircase leading up to Nairobi's Club Soundd. Above us, the final open mic poets are sharing their work in a space crammed with 300 people. The air crackles with the electricity of Nairobi's just-concluded first-ever poetry slam.

I say: "We just saw, upstairs, in the last 2 hours, what poetry can do. Poetry lets us see and feel what we numb ourselves against in everyday life. The full spectrum of being human – from ecstatic joy to burning rage to acute grief. Poetry allows us to break silence around what scares us most – whether it's HIV, or poverty, or political repression, or being left by our lover. Poetry moves us from paralysis into action. Poetry connects us to each other, invites us into each other's reality, makes us larger, more alive, in the world."

Club Soundd is one of Nairobi's newer bar/restaurant/nightclub venues, opened six months ago by Luai, charming entrepreneur of Lebanese heritage. His dream is to create a space that nurtures arts and culture, while it draws people in to kick back with a beer in front of the large-screen TVs. He generously hosts the monthly open mic readings of Kwani, Nairobi's explosive literary organization, and hangs the red walls with original work from local artists. On the TV screens tonight, Ivory Coast plays Nigeria in the semi-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations. Tough act for poets to compete with.

"Get Ready To Slam", said Kenya's Daily Nation 3 days ago. "Poetry Slam at Club Soundd" trumpeted another article. Journalists love the word "slam". It's short, punchy, visceral, action-packed. Yet of the 300 people who showed up at Club Soundd, perhaps only half-a-dozen had any idea what they were in for. The rest were there because of the buzz, word-of-mouth and media-generated, that something exciting was going to happen tonight.

"What is Slam Poetry?" I was asked in interview after interview. "What is Spoken Word? How is it different from normal poetry?"

"Spoken word and slam poetry are NOT different from ‘regular’ poetry," I insisted. "They simply reclaim poetry as an oral tradition, communicated live, through the voice and the body. Africa is where spoken word, the oral tradition, began. A poetry slam is a game, a device, to get people interested in poetry. Human beings love competitions. Slam began in a bar in Chicago, in the US, and spread like wildfire, regenerating poetry as a vital, explosive, grassroots arts movement that everyone could be a part of. In a slam, poets perform their original work, without props, costumes or accompaniment, to a 3-minute time limit. Judges are selected from the audience, and they score the poets, Olympic-style, from 1-10, based on content and performance. The top-scoring poet at the end of the night is the winner."

When Kwani first invited me to feature at their open mic on my upcoming trip to Nairobi, I threw out the idea of hosting a poetry slam. They leapt on it eagerly, and before I knew it, we were planning Nairobi's First Ever Poetry Slam. I was initially wary about how it would go down – was it an appropriate form for the Nairobi scene? Would the competition intimidate rather than encourage, new voices?

"Your job," I told the poets who'd signed up to compete, "is to have the best time of your life. Don't get hung up on the scores, or the audience response. The moment you get on the stage, you've already won. Just by being there. By showing everyone in the room that they too, can share their creative voice with the world."

At the start of the night, we're worried that we only have three people signed up to slam. And we're concerned about the turnout; my performance at the Carnivore, four days ago, drew a disappointingly small audience. We're hoping the city centre location, low cover charge of Ksh. 50, and press coverage in the last few days, will bring people in tonight.

By 8pm, when we close the slam list, there are 13 poets on it. Several more arrive in the next few minutes, too late to add to the list, but we promise them a place in the open mic reading. People are pouring in; all the seats are taken. They are sitting on the floor, on the edge of the stage, on each other's laps, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the bar at the back. I have never seen this in Kenya before – a space filled with people of every ethnicity, generation, socioeconomic background, hungry for something new, something they can't get from TV, video, surfing the web, something that feeds their souls and imaginations.

If we needed confirmation that we're breaking new ground here, the media presence supplies it. There are two TV crews in the house – from KTN and Citizen TV. Journalists from the Daily Nation, the Kenya Times, BBC Africa. After the slam, when they interview me, almost all of them will tell me that they, too, write poems. A couple will show me their work. Share the secret longing to be heard. Tell me they thought about signing up for the slam, but weren't quite ready. Next time, however…

The slam begins. We hear love poems. Break-up poems. Political poems. A poem that explores the meaning of manhood. A rhythmic tribute to the heroes of Kenya's war of independence. A scathing indictment of poetry as useless – in the form of a poem! One poet comes out as HIV-positive, to a room of 300 strangers, in a poignant letter to his parents, infused with love and regret. Another does a hilarious improvised riff on the Ivory Coast – Nigeria football match, still running on the TV screen in the bar. I am especially happy that over 50% of the poets are women. I've been told by dozens of women in the US that they would love to perform their work, but are intimidated by their male-dominated local slams.

The audience is beside itself. They yell, cheer, clap, howl for their favourite poets, boo the judges when the scores are low. No football crowd, no rock concert crowd, could be more engaged, more enthusiastic.

One of my old friends, who stood in the back all night because the place was so jammed, sends me an SMS that night: "I was amazed and enlightened. I never knew poetry could be like that. To me, ‘poetry’ was what we studied in school."

The word I hear most often afterwards is: Inspired.

"I was so inspired."
"That was so inspiring."
"I want to be in the next slam."
"I want to bring everyone I know to the next slam."

The poet who read about being HIV-positive comes up to take my hand. We both have tears in our eyes, a silent tribute to the power of what happened tonight. Another man tells me he wanted to sign up for the slam, but was afraid:

"I am Ugandan. I was scared to speak in a room full of Kenyans. When I heard your poems about being Indian, I thought: Next time, I will do it."

Kwani sells out of copies of its latest issue. Luai, the Club Soundd owner, says to me: "I am so happy. This crowd is what Kwani has been working for, what they deserve."

It's only the beginning. What can poetry do, right now, in Kenya? Create community. Break open deathly silences. Give people a platform to share their deepest joys and fears. Open a space for dissent, debate, discussion, education, around everything from safe sex to constitutional reform. Make us larger, braver, more joyful, more contentious. Push us to engage with the world around us, capture it in language, work that language to its most beautiful and powerful distillation, pour it out like water for the thirsty. Inspire us to trust our own intelligence and passion, our hunger for art that is real and hard and truthful; messy and complex and bloody. Above all, art that is ours. Trust that our own voices are the thick grain, the juicy greens, we have been hungry for.

* Kenyan poet, Shailja Patel, is a US Lambda Poetry Slam champion, and has competed in two US national Poetry Slam Championships. She is currently developing a one-woman spoken-word theatre show, Migritude, which she looks forward to presenting in Kenya soon. Visit her at www.shailja.com

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights has honoured John Githongo "for his courageous whistle blowing on the Anglo Leasing scandal." "By exposing corruption and cover-up networks within government, Githongo has made an outstanding contribution to the fight against corruption," the organisation said in its citation. It praised the country's former ethics and governance PS, as the "high priest of good governance" for his "boldness, creativity and audacity."

Poverty is on a sharp increase despite the high economic growth recorded last year, says a report. Prepared by Kenya's Ministry of Planning and National Development, the report says runaway poverty rates can only be reduced if the country achieves growth levels of more than seven per cent, same as those of Asian countries. "The economic growth recorded in recent times is not sufficient for reducing poverty and sustaining development," it says. The country's unstable economy has seen poverty increase by from 48 per cent in the early 1980s to 56 per cent last year.

African Medical Research Foundation, AMREF, is creating 21st century ‘Black Pinocchios’ from the street urchins of Nairobi. Wanjiru Kinyanjui caught up with one of them and reports on his life. The boys are all stiffly lying on the hard concrete floor. One by one, they ‘wriggle’ out of their comatose positions, stand up, ease up, wave their passports to the audience and announce their names. The 20 young men have been transformed from disobedient wooden puppets into real boys as butterflies metamorphose from caterpillars.

Free software developers and advocates from across the African continent will be heading for Nairobi in Kenya this week as they gather for the second Fossfa African Conference on the Digital Commons. The Idlelo2 conference will run from Thursday 23 to Saturday 25 February. Key issues that will be hammered out during the conference include free and open source software in government, health services, education and entrepreneurship.

I write to register my support against all acts that constitute a breach of trust of the peoples will. Corruption in Africa is one of the greatest vices needing a proper inward look.

In as much as it might be true that this attempt by the Kenyan government may just be a convenient smoke screen to thwart the focus of the populace, I have the strong conviction that all of us must lend support to such a bold step taken by the Kenyan Government.

Evidence of widespread corruption abounds throughout Africa. Little has been done to counter its growth and if any authority takes the responsibility to treat it in such an open manner as the Kenyan Government has done then our support is needed. The Kibaki government may just be guilty of the several malpractices which abound in Africa, but certainly we can count the number of leaders, be they good or bad, who have taken such decisions to avail the suspects to justice. It is too early to coin it a smoke screen. This may just be some new wine in old wine skin.

The ongoing registration of refugees in Nairobi's Eastleigh area by the Government of Kenya is a milestone in the quest for increased protection of refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya. This also marks a departure in state practice from what scholars have described as what the 'eye refuses to see', in reference to refugees who choose to live in urban centres as opposed to settlements and camps in remote areas. The Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK) supports this move and urges the Government to uphold the promise not to victimize those who present themselves for registration. Even without the necessary legal framework on refugees, RCK has constantly called upon the Government to respect the rights of refugees and asylum seekers and especially in regard to the rights to movement, to identification and to earn livelihoods. In our view the benefit of screening and registering asylum seekers far outweighs ignoring the situation all together.

I agree with Onyongo Oloo. The fuss in Kenya is similar to the one in my country, Zambia. Both countries look to the West in the anti-corruption crusade. In Zambia, the fight against corruption is personified by prosecuting former President Chiluba. Curiously, President Mwanawasa expects us to believe that his anti corruption crusade is serious and not a sham! It is shameful that Githongo is fighting corruption in Kenya from Britain. If he is too scared to do it from Nairobi, let him find a base in an African country.

Editor comment: This is rather an unfair, and rather one could suggest even naive, position to take. Githongo has been heroic in challenging corruption. It is naive to believe this can be done without threat to one's own and one's family's safety. We should not equate Githongo's position with the use that the the western media and governments might make use of his revelations.

Business tycoon Jimmy Wanjigi has moved to court seeking to gag The Standard newspapers from writing stories about him over the unfolding Anglo Leasing scandal. Wanjigi moved to court under a certificate of urgency claiming that The Standard wrote defamatory words concerning him in a story published earlier in the week. The story indicated that Wanjigi had been ordered to surrender his gun and passport as investigations into the Sh7 billion scandal gained tempo.

Kenya's Vice President now faces the threat of a 'citizens arrest' unless he resigns over corruption allegations. The country's civil society has threatened to move to the High Court to seek a warrant of arrest against Awori, the Head of Civil Service, the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General. The group issued the threat at a press conference convened under the umbrella body, Name and Shame Campaign Network.

Kenyans in the diaspora are contributing an equivalent of 3.8 per cent of national income through remittances. In the year 2004, for instance, Kenyans living and working abroad remitted about Ksh35 billion ($464 million), which overshadows the net foreign direct investment (FDI) of Ksh3.6 billion ($50.4 million), which accounted for 0.41 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. "Migration is an important issue in Kenya, with the country both a significant destination and a source of migrants," said Francis Mwega of the Department of Economics at the University of Nairobi during the launch of the World Bank's 2006 Global Economic Prospects report in Nairobi.

ATPS is seeking to recruit a dynamic individual to fill the international position of director of research and training to be based at its secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya. Reporting to the executive director, he/she will be responsible for providing overall intellectual and administrative leadership to the development and implementation of research, capacity building and policy advocacy programmes.

ACORD'S objective is to contribute to Pan-African and Global initiatives that strengthen Food Sovereignty in Africa through an advocacy strategy aimed at supporting African citizens to define and implement food security policies adapted to their local contexts. Under the supervision of the Assistant Programming Director for Advocacy and Themes, the Livelihood Thematic Manager will play a role of facilitator and catalyst to engage ACORD and her key partners in the social action process on food sovereignty at Pan African and Global level.

Onyango Oloo, a Kenyan political activist and ex political prisoner, argues that there is a deepening crisis of legitimacy for the Kenyan government. The implication of key government officials in grand corruption has struck yet another nail in the coffin of the shattered and battered National Rainbow Coalition. Oloo sees corruption as driven by two factors; internally by a lack of democratic institutions, structures and culture and externally as one of the by-products of the disastrous neo-liberal policies imposed by the West and its institutions.

As I write these lines, Kenya is being rocked hard by the ramifications of the dossier unleashed from the United Kingdom by John Githongo, the country’s former anti-corruption czar. Githongo has since fled the country after uncovering the deep involvement of key Kibaki insiders in one of Kenya’s most notorious scandals - the Anglo-Leasing Affair.

Earlier in the week, the President appeared on live television to inform his compatriots that Kiraitu Murungi, the Energy minister and Prof. George Saitoti, the Education minister had “stepped aside” to allow for unimpeded investigations of the twin graft scandals of Anglo-Leasing and Goldenberg.

Some observers believe that this dramatic announcement may have been a desperate, even deft move to stave off, pre-empt or undercut the looming mass actions announced by a consortium of 76 civil society organizations and to scuttle a planned meeting of parliamentarians ratcheting up the pressure for the re opening of the National Assembly to allow members of Parliament to debate the corruption scandals.

Whatever the case, these latest resignations - coming hot on the heels of the firing of State House official and Kibaki right hand man Alfred Getonga, the resignation of long-time Presidential confidant and former Finance minister David Mwiraria and the dropping of former cabinet minister Dr. Chris Murungaru in the post-referendum reshuffle last year -have if anything deepened the crisis of legitimacy for the Kenyan government and struck another nail into the coffin of the shattered and battered National Rainbow Coalition which rode to power on a landslide victory, with a mandate to fight graft and deliver a new democratic constitution.

Many have hailed John Githongo as Kenya’s knight in shining armor and have lauded the critical, sometimes strident opinion pieces of former British envoy Sir Edward Clay. The Kenyan media, especially the Nation Media Group, has been giving itself a pat on the back, preening in self-congratulation about their role in publicizing and exposing the scandal.

Indeed, the feistiness of the Kenyan press is ironically one key indicator of how much democratic space has opened up since the ascendancy of the Kibaki-led NARC regime. Truth be said, the courage of the Kenyan media and the almost unfettered expressions of critical views by ordinary Kenyans has happened in spite of, rather than because of the NARC government. Indeed, many are the times when demonstrators have been shot dead in cold blood, clubbed senseless, tear gassed, arrested and vilified by leading politicians allied to the ruling elite. The freedom of the press in Kenya is a direct by product of the burgeoning democratic struggles within the country over the last fifteen years or so.

In as much as the ongoing campaign against corruption in Kenya has highlighted the need for clean, transparent and accountable governance, it also throws up several convenient smokescreens when it comes to unraveling the enabling environment for grand graft in Kenya.

Many Nairobi-based pundits and observers have focused on the personal greed, moral foibles and even psychological make up of the leading villains. A few have probed the links to the need for the NAK faction to have a war chest to perpetuate itself in power come the next presidential elections in 2007.

Laudable as these insights are, I am of the opinion that they do gloss over two fundamental factors - one internal and the other external that seem to fuel the waves of corruption scandals that have bedeviled Kenya for decades.

The internal factor has to do with the refusal of successive ruling cliques to take the lead in democratizing the structures of power - especially in the economic sphere. In the particular case of the Kibaki regime, there is a justifiable national ire at the NARC government because it is the one formation that rode to power with a pledge and a popular mandate to deliver a new democratic constitution within its first one hundred days in power.

The fact that a national constitutional conference concluded its deliberations by ratifying and proclaiming a new draft constitution that was effectively trashed, thrashed and shelved sent strong signals that the parvenu rulers - especially in the NAK faction fronted by the President himself - having tasted what KANU had enjoyed for 39 years were quite reluctant to forego the perks of power - like the latitude given for ministers and government insiders to circumvent procurement and conflict of interest policies for self-enrichment. Therefore the adamant refusal by the ruling clique to acquiesce to the national demand for a new constitutional dispensation was a direct factor that led to the rot of institutional safeguards against corrupt practices. Indeed the injection of political agendas directly propelled the Anglo-Leasing scandal - with disclosures that one of the motivating factors that drove key Kibaki insiders to loot state coffers in collusion with shady hoodlum business types was to stuff a war chest full of loot that NAK would use to fight its electoral rivals in 2007.

The external factor is best described in the following excerpt from Sue Hawley in a July 2000 publication by the Corner House titled “Exporting Corruption: Privatization, Multinationals and Bribery”:

“The growth of corruption across the globe is largely the result of rapid privatization of public enterprises, along with reforms to downsize and undervalue civil services, pushed on developing countries by the World Bank, the IMF and western governments supporting their transnational corporations…” (http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/launder/general/2001/0705sng.htm)

If we accept the argument that I am advancing - namely that corruption is driven internally by lack of democratic institutions, structures and a culture that militates and acts as a check on abuse of power by political barons and other state-connected thieves and that it is one of the by-products of the disastrous neo-liberal policies imposed by the West and her institutions like the IMF on ‘Third World’ countries like Kenya, then it follows that corruption is a fundamentally political problem rooted firmly within certain local and global ideological constructs and parameters.

To put it more colloquially, graft is a manifestation of a rotten neo-colonial regime gutting the country at the behest of the imperialist powers. This means that at an ideological level, a consistent fight against corruption in societies like Kenya has to be embedded in a broader struggle for national democracy and against imperialist neo-liberal policies and machinations.

That is why I find it bizarre to see so many of my Kenyan compatriots look to places like the UK and individuals like Sir Edward Clay for mentorship and support in the war on corruption.

It is surreal to find the sleaze engulfed states like the United States and the United Kingdom - with their ENRONs, Haliburtons and so on - presume to act as the 21st Century champions against graft and other economic crimes and go further not only to lecture and harangue, but to sanction and punish states and governments that they consider “corrupt”. These mark you, are the very states which consciously assisted pariah governments in Africa like Ian Smith’s illegal regime in the so called “Rhodesia” and the racist cabal in the apartheid South Africa circumvent international censure and sanctions for their repressive and corrupt practices in years gone by. These are the same governments which turn a blind eye to the erection of the apartheid wall in Israel and the series of scandals implicating the now ailing Ariel Sharon.

We must therefore openly question the motivations and ideological intentions of these imperialist powers when they jump into the fray in battling corruption in places like Kenya and so on.

This is not to say that we have swallowed the demagogic populist appeals of discredited Kenyan ministers caught in a web of deceit who suddenly discover their mythical anti-imperialist credentials only when they are caught with their pants down. It is so easy to pierce through their threadbare rhetorical flourishes - especially when these ministers are confronted with compromising facts and startling admissions on tape - even when these surreptitious recordings are executed in less than ethical fashion.

By interrogating the motives of the Western powers in “fighting” graft in countries like Kenya, we are also putting a question mark on the local actors who, like the embedded journalists during the Iraqi invasion seem to be snuggling in bed with the Sir Edward Clays of this world.

One litmus test that would indicate whether these actors are driven by purely patriotic motives rather than being proxies and conduits for nefarious imperialist - even regime change agendas - can be gleaned by the extent that these local players participate in national democratic struggles and oppose neo-liberal imperialist policies.

We are aware that the anti-corruption campaign the world over has provided a convenient platform for many a would be imperialist friendly Presidential aspirant in this or that neo-colonial outpost. Of course, the surest testing ground is the arena of mass struggles where progressive and democratic forces meet to know each other more, struggling for unity and clarity while pursuing concrete pro-people goals.

* Onyango Oloo is a Nairobi-based political activist and former political prisoner who is currently the National Co-coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum. He returned to Kenya in late October 2005 after an 18-year stint in exile where he lived in Toronto and Montreal, Canada. The views expressed are his personal opinions and do not in any way reflect the positions of the Kenya Social Forum - which in the spirit of the World Social Forum process, does not in fact hold or express any political or ideological viewpoints as an entity.

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Hundreds of Muslim protesters in Garissa town gave the Government of Kenya a two-week ultimatum to cut diplomatic ties with Denmark. They were protesting the publication by a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist. They also asked the Government to close the Danish Embassy in Nairobi. One person died in Nairobi on Friday during similar demonstrations. The protesters asked President Kibaki to recall all diplomatic officials from Denmark and ban imports from the country.

Kenya has been singled out as one of the leading transit points for the illegal animal trade destined for Europe and Asia. According to a recent report titled "Ivory Markets of Europe", most of the ivory originates from war-torn countries of sub-Saharan Africa where laws against the killing of wildlife are almost non-existent. The document cites central Africa as one of the sources of ivory that passes through Kenya and other East African countries.

This paper argues that HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns have missed the point by concentrating on women's empowerment and women's ability to negotiate safer sex. Instead it asks to what extent disempowered men in East Africa are motivated for responsible sexual behaviour and HIV/AIDS prevention. Drawing on research in rural and urban East Africa, the paper discusses how socio-economic change has limited men's access to income-earning opportunities, leaving many men unable to fulfil the social roles of breadwinner and household head.

The planned street demonstrations by the civil society to force President Kibaki to act on grand corruption kick off this week. The Name and Shame Corruption Network (Nascon), the umbrella organisation of the 76 groups, announced on Sunday that it had completed plans for the mass action.