A Certain Amount of Madness Podcast

Beyond the Madness is a segment of A certain amount of madness that discusses the news beyond the headlines. Enjoy the show and remember to subscribe.

In this episode, Dr. Mamka is joined by Francis Agar, a nuclear and quantum engineer and director at Kenya’s Nuclear Power and Energy Agency (NuPEA), for a frank and wide-ranging conversation about what industrialization actually means, how Kenya’s industrial trajectory was shaped by colonialism and structural adjustment, and what it would take to build an economy that produces what it consumes.

From the need to protect local industries and develop domestic production to the foundations of an industrial base built around food, shelter, and clothing, we interrogate the political choices shaping Kenya’s economic future.

Why do countries that industrialized through protection and subsidies preach free trade to others?

Why are Kenya’s industrial, energy, and technology policies disconnected? And where is the long-term vision for building the productive capacity this country needs?

With the draft policy open for public participation, these are questions Kenyans must engage with. Read the policy, attend a public participation session, and help shape the debate over what Kenya’s industrial future should look like.

Read the draft policy in full

RESOURCES

Book: Engineering the Transformation of African Agriculture - Lawrence Gumbe & Dave Anyona Kanundu

Book: Bad Samaritans The case against free-trade dogma the guilty secrets if rich nations & the threat to global prosperity Ha-Joon Chang

Film: Parasite

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Timestamps:

0:00 – Introduction

2:30 – What is industrialization, really?

7:45 – Kenya's colonial economy & the settler model

13:20 – Post-independence import substitution & its collapse

19:00 – Structural adjustment & the World Bank's "bad faith"

25:30 – Why service-sector development fails

31:15 – South Korea: industrialization without vertical integration

37:40 – The draft industrial policy: a brutal critique

44:00 – Leather by 2063? The failure of imagination

49:30 – What Kenya should do: vertical integration & the industrial base

56:10 – Protectionism, subsidies & the hypocrisy of the West

1:02:00 – Final thoughts & how to participate

In the very first edition of Beyond the Madness, we look beyond the headlines to examine the systems, decisions, and power structures shaping Kenya. Joined by lawyer and feminist movement builder Njahira Gitahi, we unpack the Supreme Court ruling on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), what it means for parliamentary oversight, and the growing concentration of power in the executive.

We then turn to the privatization of strategic national assets, questioning what should be off-limits and how decisions involving infrastructure, public resources, and national sovereignty shape Kenya's future.

From there, we examine the national milk shortage, the failure to plan for predictable climate shocks, and the deeper questions of food security, dependency, and agricultural self-sufficiency.

Finally, we explore the battle over Karura Forest and Muthaiga Golf Club, tracing the history of land injustice, the unequal access to green spaces, and the unchecked development transforming Nairobi into a concrete jungle.

Across these stories, we ask who controls Kenya's resources, who benefits from political and economic decisions, and why public attention so often gets pulled toward spectacle instead of the systems that shape everyday life.

This is Beyond the Madness: the news behind the news, and the history, power, and structures shaping Kenya beyond the headlines.

In this episode, we examine AI through the lens of power, extraction and sovereignty. From the critical minerals that power global technologies to the data generated by millions of African users, we ask what role Africa plays in the rapidly expanding AI economy and who benefits from it.

The conversation explores the rise of data centres across the continent, the fiscal and environmental questions they raise, the biases embedded in algorithms, and the impact AI may have on jobs, taxation and public policy.

As governments, technology companies and investors race to shape the future of artificial intelligence, this episode asks whether Africa will remain a supplier of resources and data, or build the institutions needed to exercise greater control over its digital future.

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The Kenyan president declared a crackdown on foreign retailers and small traders in the name of protecting precarious employment for Kenyans. A closer look at the numbers shows that foreign small traders make up a minuscule of that sector of the economy, begging the question, what is really behind Kenya’s recent unprecedented wave of xenophobia?!

In this episode, Sungu Oyoo, Presidential Aspirant for 2027, spokesperson for Kongamano la Mapinduzi, writer and economist examines Kenya’s rising anti-foreigner sentiment and the deeper economic and political forces driving the debate, including the shrinking manufacturing sector that is wiping away jobs, and local manifestations of the global scapegoating of migrants by right-wing nationalists, among other factors driving this phenomenon.

We also ask what happens to East African integration when African countries turn against each other’s workers and traders and who benefits from keeping the continent divided.

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Kenya is often presented as an energy success story. More than 90% of its electricity comes from renewable sources. Yet electricity remains expensive, energy consumption is well below the African average while millions of households still rely on charcoal and firewood for cooking. What is the problem and what should be done about it?Joined by Dr. David Otwoma, a nuclear scientist and founding president of the Nuclear Society of Kenya, and Irene Abagi, an energy specialist, we examine Kenya's energy poverty and ask: who really controls Kenya’s energy system and what is driving the high cost of electricity?The conversation looks at the role of Independent Power Producers, controversial Power Purchase Agreements, Kenya Power’s financial pressures, and the interests shaping how electricity is generated and priced.We also ask a bigger question: what kind of energy system does Kenya need to build a productive, industrial economy? The episode also explores the future of Kenyan industry, community resistance to major energy projects, and what a new administration could do in its first 100 days to fundamentally change the country's energy system.

In this episode, we are joined by historian Rene Odanga to trace how Kenya arrived at this point. We explore the transition from ideological and ethnicised political violence to the modern "rate card" economy of hired muscle, the role of economic precarity and political rhetoric, the gendered nature of violence, and questions around the use of false-flag operations to maintain political control.Can organised civic action challenge the normalisation of violence, or has violence become too deeply embedded in Kenya's political system?Watch or listen to the full episode.

In this episode, we are joined by South African writer and historian Phethani Mazibandhila to unpack the growing wave of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa and the deeper political and economic forces driving it.

Far from being a simple conflict over jobs or migration, xenophobic attacks are situated within South Africa's unresolved history of colonialism, apartheid, land dispossession, and economic inequality. We examine how migrant labour has long been central to the country's economy, why post-1994 political settlements failed to transform material conditions for the majority, and how movements such as Operation Dudula have emerged within this context.

The conversation also explores the role of capital, political elites, and external actors in shaping narratives that pit African workers against one another while leaving underlying structures of exploitation untouched. As calls for exclusion grow louder, we ask whether Pan-Africanism offers a more meaningful path toward justice, solidarity, and liberation across the continent.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen on your favourite podcast platform.

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In this episode, we are joined by Boaz Waruku, veteran educationist and Senior Advisor to the Elimu Bora Working Group, to discuss Kenya's education crisis. Long considered the great equalizer in an otherwise deeply unequal country, education has, over recent years, been beset with escalating challenges and controversies, from the hasty, ill-conceived rollout of the Competency Based Curriculum, to the return of school fees, to the collapse of higher education as universities undergo insolvency, to the recent wave of school closures following fires in high schools across the country. We explore what it would mean, philosophically, in policy, and financially to actualize the Constitutional guarantee of free and compulsory basic education for a developmental state, and consider education's fundamental place in transforming Kenya.

Nine out of ten Kenyan households are in financial distress. Not the country — the household. Your neighbor. Your mother. You. Fuliza alone disbursed 1.24 trillion shillings last year. People are skipping meals to service loans of a thousand shillings. Young people can't get jobs because they're CRB-listed.

A regulator built for 42 banks is now chasing 800 lenders and losing.In this episode, Dr. Mamka Anyona sits down with Development Economist and Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Nairobi, Radha Upadhyaya and Feminist Community Organizer, Naomi Barasa to trace how a celebrated financial inclusion story quietly became a personal debt emergency.

This is a conversation about structural adjustment hiding inside an app, about debt as a tool of social fragmentation, and about what it means to organize for dignity when you're too busy worrying about collection day.

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