It was all bliss until 1997. At the height of the Dunia Mbaya fame, the band was performing at Kenyatta Sports Centre in Kisumu, one eventful Sunday in October 1997, when her husband began palpitating on stage. The following Friday, Prince Julie collapsed and died, forcing a young Princess Jully to painfully chart a new musical path for herself.
After laying her husband to rest, she picked whatever pieces remained from their band and trudged on. Princess Jully was a natural born fighter. In 1999, she won Shs 100,000 and a Mercedes Benz at the 1999 Kisima Awards for her Dunia Mbaya hit.
In Smithereens of Death, you will meet the illogical and absurd, and the mysterious and incomprehensible, all weaved into a functional mat by humour, and laughter – but it is the laughter of a mad man laughing at his nakedness.
Semi-automated offside technology (SAOT), as was already used in the 2022 Qatar World Cup and 2024 Euros, employs AI for high-speed tracking of players with high levels of detail.
Faith Kipyegon has broken her own 1,500m world record just weeks ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics – where she has set her sights on her third consecutive gold over the distance. No athlete in history has won three Olympic 1,500m titles and it would make 2024 a huge year for the Kenyan star, who also competes in the 5,000m event.
If Tanzania is a train, moving slowly but surely on a well-designed track, Kenya is a matatu: rowdy, colourful, intense, rude, vibrant, arrogant, overbearing, capricious, and drunk on its own hype.
Instead of dismissing what he built as only the work of a dictator, I draw out the complexity of this time and what it meant to celebrate African craft, art forms and traditional culture.
South African animation house Triggerfish and Kenyan writer Ng’endo Mukii were big winners in the TV/Media category at this year's Annie Award. But the recognition, for their episode of the animated Disney series, Kizazi Moto, echoes far beyond this one production.
