The Kenyan communications minister, Raphael Tuju, has seconded Dr James Kulubi - currently responsible for government ICT policy - to replace the director-general of the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), Sammy Kirui, who has been sent on indefinite leave.
This follows last week`s shock decision by the Kenyan government to dissolve the CCK, supposedly due to investigations into improprieties in the selection of the country`s second national operator.
While the move has full cabinet backing, no evidence has been produced as to what these improprieties are, meaning that Kirui has effectively been judged guilty without any formal evidence being presented.
According to a report in the Balancing Act News Update, in the course of this dispute, the Kenyan government`s dirty laundry has been aired, with the news of an international call diversion scandal at Kenya Telkom.
It has been reported that police tracked telecommunication wires to the roof of an office building, which were connected to an unregistered satellite dish, confiscating equipment connected to 80 Telkom lines and a number of mobile phones.
After the raid, Frances Wangusi, CCK director in charge of licensing, compliance and standards, was quoted as saying: "This is a mini-Telkom Kenya. We estimate that the equipment alone has made over Sh140 million in the past three years."
Wangusi and a team of senior CCK managers were in the process of preparing a report on the extent of the illegal international call syndicates in the country when, it is alleged, transport and communications minister John Michuki ordered that Wangusi be sacked.
Joining the dots
Balancing Act chief executive, Russell Southwood, says that once one joins the dots, things begin to look interesting.
He says that if one considers that Michuki seeks to head off the investigation of an operation described as a "mini-Telkom Kenya", which cannot have happened without someone in Telkom Kenya`s senior management knowing about it at the highest level, and now a second minister seeks to take away power from CCK, it makes for a frightening picture.
He points out that with the disbanding of the CCK, there is now no one who can order Telkom Kenya to behave in a competitive fashion and the illegal call diversion within Telkom Kenya may continue, although there is no way of telling because any investigation has now been halted.
This interference in the workings of a supposedly independent body will certainly not recommend Kenya to foreign investors, and - says Southwood - any prospective buyer of Telkom Kenya should ask for a due diligence investigation to cover illegal call diversions.
No senior executive in a company with US shareholdings, recalling what happened to senior Vodacom executives who bought into what was then Econet`s mobile subsidiary in Nigeria, will want to lose his job over this one, he says.
William Stucke, chairman of the African ISP Association, concurs with this view, although he is more worried about the broader picture.
"I fear that investments in Africa as a whole may suffer, rather than only in Kenya, as the outside world often forgets that there are over 50 countries in Africa, and often sees the continent as a single nation," he was quoted as saying.
"I am really afraid that SA may get tarred with the same brush as Kenya, and their decision to disband the CCK makes us all look like a bunch of banana republics."
Related stories:
Kenyan comms issue discussed at UK event
Kenyan regulator disbanded
Econet officially Kenya`s third operator
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