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Devastating fire ripped through Nairobi’s Tassia Estate in Embakasi East on the evening of Tuesday, August 26, leaving a trail of destruction, displacing more than 450 households, and rendering countless families homeless.

The massive blaze, which appears to have originated from an informal housing unit, spread rapidly through the densely packed structures built largely from iron sheets and wood. Preliminary reports suggest a possible gas explosion triggered the disaster, though the exact cause remains under investigation.

According to witnesses, panic gripped the community as the flames consumed homes within minutes. Families fled with little more than the clothes on their backs, leaving behind valuables, tools of trade, and critical documents.

“We lost everything. My children don’t even have clothes left. Important documents, my business stock, even the little savings I had in the house all gone in minutes,” said Mary Atieno, a tearful resident who watched helplessly as her home was reduced to ashes.

Emergency teams, including the Nairobi City County Fire Brigade, Kenya Red Cross, police, and volunteers, battled the inferno late into the night before finally containing it. One person was evacuated to the Embakasi Health Centre for treatment. “We are conducting assessments to establish the extent of damage and urgent needs of the displaced families. Many require shelter, food, and clothing,” a Kenya Red Cross official said. 

Embakasi East MP Babu Owino expressed deep sorrow, noting the immense loss suffered. “The fire destroyed many homes in the area, leaving families with nothing. Many have lost not only their homes but also their belongings, memories, and sources of livelihoods,” he said, adding that the tightly packed nature of informal settlements contributed significantly to the fire’s rapid spread.

Just a week earlier, on August 18, a seven-month-old baby died in a night fire that razed several houses. In March, another blaze in Kwa Kassim within Tassia left six people severely injured and destroyed property of undetermined value. Alarmingly, most of these fires have been linked to gas explosions, raising concerns about safety standards and the need for stricter regulation.

Residents and leaders have also criticized the responsiveness of Nairobi’s emergency services. During a past fire in March, Embakasi North MP James Gakuya faulted Governor Johnson Sakaja’s administration for failing to provide timely assistance to victims, despite the existence of a Disaster Management Fund.

“This is not the first time Tassia has faced such a tragedy. We need long-term solutions – better planning, fire hydrants, and stronger disaster preparedness,” said John Mwangi, a local youth leader assisting survivors. By Vincent Olando, KDRTV

JGC Holdings Corp. has announced that overseas EPC operating company JGC Corp. has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Tanzania (the Ministry of Energy and others) on sharing LNG plant expertise and other co-operation.

The MoU was presented at the METI-hosted 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 9) signing ceremony at Pacifico Yokohama on 21 August 2025, attended by JGC Corp. Representative Director and President, Shoji Yamada, and H.E. Ambassador, Baraka Haran Luvanda of Tanzania.

The Tanzanian government, working with oil majors and others, is planning an LNG development project for a huge offshore natural gas field with estimated total reserves of about 35 trillion ft3. This natural gas potential is equivalent to nearly 12 years of LNG consumption in Japan.

With this project in mind, the MoU is intended to strengthen the friendly ties between the two nations as JGC supports the project through shared technical expertise on LNG plants and engages in collaborative local human resource development. LNG plant knowledge will be shared through talks on key technologies, economics, and other topics.  By , LNG

A section of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) 

The Government of Kenya has initiated talks with the World Bank aimed at supporting the construction and redevelopment of major infrastructure projects across the country, including the redevelopment of critical transport infrastructure.

Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir, in a statement released after a meeting on Tuesday, revealed that the government had initiated a consultative session with the World Bank regarding the development projects, including the redevelopment of Kenya's largest airport, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). 

The government is racing against time to modernise the facility amid a shortage of the necessary budgetary allocations to support its modernisation.

Chirchir had initially stated that the government would leverage Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to drive infrastructure upgrades, despite past setbacks such as the cancellation of the Adani deal for JKIA’s upgrade in November last year.

SGR Extension

During the meeting, the Washington-based monetary lender delegation by Binyam Reja, the Practice Manager for Transport for the Eastern and Southern Africa region, also expressed interest in the extension of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line to Malaba, which the government has also been on a global tour to rally funds for its extension. 

Lake Victoria Ring Road

The talks also focused on the development of the Lake Victoria Ring Road and the expansion of rural road networks, which are expected to boost regional connectivity and open up rural economies to greater trade opportunities. 

The proposed Lake Victoria Ring Road project will be a 180-kilometre highway that is expected to transform the economic and transport landscape of Western Kenya.

The mega infrastructure project will traverse five counties, Busia, Siaya, Kisumu, Homa Bay, and Migori, and is estimated to cost Ksh70 billion, according to the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA).

The road will feature a seven-metre-wide carriageway with two-metre-wide shoulders on either side to accommodate non-motorised traffic in rural areas.

In urban sections, where the road passes through trading centres, KeNHA has incorporated non-motorised transport (NMT) facilities such as footpaths and lined drains into the design, with construction targeted for the next financial year. 

Chirchir noted that these projects would play a critical role in enhancing Kenya’s position as a regional hub for trade, tourism, and investment.

“These investments could significantly enhance tourism, trade, and regional integration by facilitating efficient cross-border movement of goods and passengers,” Chirchir stated.

According to Chirchir, the meeting centred on exploring financing options for Kenya’s road and transport sector, which he described as a key driver of social and economic development.  By Frankline Oduor, Kenyans.co.ke

Qatar is hosting renewed talks between the DRC government and M23 rebels to rescue a stalled ceasefire, as violence and displacement continue to surge in eastern Congo.

Peace efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have resumed in Doha, where government representatives and the M23 militia are meeting to salvage a faltering ceasefire amid renewed fighting in the country’s east.

Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari confirmed on Tuesday that delegations from both sides had arrived in Doha to review the terms of a July agreement, Aljazeera reported.

“We’ve received the two parties here in Doha to discuss the earlier agreement,” foreign ministry spokesman al-Ansari said during a regular press briefing. He explained that the current round of talks focused on creating “a mechanism of monitoring the ceasefire, alongside [an] exchange of prisoners and detainees”.

The deal, brokered by Qatar, was intended to pave the way for a permanent end to the conflict in North and South Kivu. Talks were set to begin on 8 August and conclude by 18 August, but both deadlines passed without progress, and violence has since escalated.

Al-Ansari stressed that negotiations are ongoing and coordinated with the United States and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Washington has played a parallel role in the crisis, brokering a June ceasefire between the DRC and Rwanda. That deal was rejected by the M23, which has demanded direct talks with Kinshasa over what it calls unresolved political grievances.

Qatar-led peace effort falters as DR Congo and M23 miss negotiation deadline

Despite mediation efforts, fighting continues. Recent clashes between the Congolese army and the M23 have cast doubt on the viability of any agreement.

Rights groups have reported severe abuses. Human Rights Watch has accused the M23 of ethnically targeted “mass killings”, while United Nations experts say Rwandan forces have played a “critical” role in supporting the rebels – allegations Kigali denies.

The humanitarian toll is mounting. Aid agencies say more than two million people have been displaced in North and South Kivu this year. “It is far from the reality to say that [the war] has ended,” said Christian Rumu of Amnesty International, warning that ongoing violations “amount to crimes against humanity”.

Eastern Congo, rich in gold, cobalt, and coltan, has long been a flashpoint for armed uprisings and regional tensions. The M23’s seizure of key areas, including the strategic city of Goma earlier this year, has fuelled fears of a wider regional conflict. By Nassima Babassa, Doha News

South Sudan’s crisis cannot be reduced to leadership failures or individual corruption. At its core lies a pre-national mindset—a set of cognitive and political orientations shaped by decades of war, patrimonial authority, and weak institutionalization. This mindset explains why political elites continue to govern through militarized command, ethnic patronage, and resource extraction rather than institutional accountability.

The SPLM/A’s origins as a liberation army embedded a militarized rationality into politics. Authority is still exercised as command, not negotiation, and critique is equated with rebellion. Max Weber’s typology of authority is useful here: While South Sudan inherited the form of legal-rational bureaucracy, in practice its governance is defined by neo-patrimonial domination, where loyalty to leaders prevails over adherence to rules. Political offices become extensions of the “big man” rather than nodes of institutional authority. In the absence of strong institutions, ethnic affiliation becomes the primary source of political legitimacy.

Ernest Gellner’s insight that “in low-institutional environments, high-loyalty groups compensate for weak bureaucracies” explains why ethnic identity substitutes for citizenship. Political elites mobilize their constituencies not as national citizens, but as kin-based collectives competing over state rents. This reinforces a zero-sum logic in which state capture by one group is perceived as exclusion by others.

South Sudan’s oil economy is managed through what Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) describe as extractive institutions—systems designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of elites while systematically undermining accountability. Oil revenues are privatized into patronage networks, financing a political marketplace in Alex de Waal’s sense, where loyalty is purchased through cash, positions, and arms. Such transactional politics, while functional in the short term, undermines the possibility of building sustainable national institutions.

Perhaps the deepest crisis is the absence of a binding social contract between rulers and the ruled. Joel Migdal’s “state-in-society” framework explains this condition: in South Sudan, the state is too weak to impose rules, and instead societal actors—militias, clans, and churches—dominate the state. As a result, the government is perceived less as a provider of services than as a predator to be resisted or avoided. This has institutionalized a psychology of survival and fear, where citizens retreat into ethnic enclaves and leaders justify authoritarianism through liberationist rhetoric.

Unless South Sudan transitions from this prenational mindset to an institutional mindset, the cycle of suffering will persist. By institutional mindset, we mean one where objective, rule-based institutions replace kinship-based authority and militarized command. As Everett Hagen’s theory of social change suggests, development requires societies to abandon traditional patterns of authority and embrace organizational forms capable of sustaining innovation, trust, and cooperation.

South Sudan’s survival as a state depends on its ability to institutionalize such objective rationality in governance, transforming political power from personalized domination into national trusteeship.

The writer, Samuel Peter Oyay, is a South Sudanese political activist, strategist, and commentator with over two decades of experience in governance and management. He can be reached via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.

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