With the month of July kicking off with a scheduled 2 days water shortage, it’s hard to imagine that the typically freezing cold month will have much to offer as the weeks go on.
Well, even as you fill up every water drum, bucket and cup in your house to try and survive the drought, we’re here to give you a little something positive to keep in mind.
As the year spins into it’s second half (how are those resolutions going, anyway?), we here at Sidoman hope you’ve been having a good time and want to show you the sunny side of life.
First, with the United Kingdom recently lifting their travel advisories against Kwale, Mombasa and Kilifi, the tourism industry is set to slowly start to rebound. Tourists from the UK have begun to make their way back according to hoteliers here in the coastal hubs.
Additionally, travel insurance charges for vacation visits to the areas have dropped owing to the perceived reduction in the likelihood of holiday seekers being harmed on their trips.
This will go a long way towards making Kenya a competitive destination in the international tourism market. If nothing else, July promises to inject some much needed foreign exchange from our dwindling tourism caches.
While we’re on the subject of international attention, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has has set it’s financial sights upon our fair Nairobi to be the site of its first Public-Private Partnership resource hub.
This means that with plans to set up similar hubs across Africa, Kenya will be the centre serving the region: through us, AfDB intends to supplement infrastructure budgets to the tune of about $90 million geared towards development. AfDB also provides support to African governments in technical, legal and financial advisory capacities, as well as training initiatives with the goal of enhancing the march of development.
Another major financial institution paying attention to Kenya is the World Bank. If you can remember back in the time when the news would start with a portrait of our President, you can remember coverage of flooding in Westerns Kenya.
For many of us, the word “Budalangi” is still synonymous with a tragic yet predictable story about a rainy season that came with death, injury and mass destruction.
The World Bank is hoping to change this. With funding of approximately KES.6 billion to come, the Kenya Water Security and Climate Resilience project aims at rehabilitating the lower Nzoia dykes to protect residents of the area from the wrath of mother nature.
With this comes a reduction in the risk of water borne diseases associated with floods and better clean water security to the around 65,000 residents that would have otherwise faced the horrors that come with annual floods.
What better way to stay warm in July than with the knowledge that your fellow Kenyans will not perish in weather events that can be mitigated? Coupled with the issuing of six additional broadcasting licenses that guarantees an increase in Kenyan content on our airwaves, it is easy to find the silver lining in the freezing clouds of the month to come.
We’re going to be optimists here, are you?
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