Kenya’s beer queen Tabitha Karanja’s success is a classic “David and Goliath” tale Tabitha Mukami Karanja chats with her senior managers in her spacious office in Naivasha, 70km west of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Behind her stands a chest of drawers stacked with green and brown bottles bearing the labels of her company’s liquor brands. Against another wall is a wooden cabinet with files and several trophies. The soft-spoken Ms Karanja, 49, is the founder and CEO of Keroche Brewer- ies, Kenya’s first locally owned beer manufacturer. Despite her calm demeanor, Ms Karanja is unrelenting in her quest to expand Keroche’s…
Omondi Oloo
Kenya’s rival trade unions The government may be playing two rival labour federations against each other By Omondi Oloo Before independence, the colonial government was the major obstacle to the growth of Kenya’s labour movement. Now it is facing what could be its biggest ever challenge: the government of President Uhuru Kenyatta. The Central Organization of Trade Unions (Cotu) was established in 1965, two years after independence from Britain. Until then, British rulers had often sided with employers to thwart organised labour. Despite early difficulties, Cotu managed to expand its membership to 400,000 in the late 1980s. By 2010, this…
