Sit Down With BAKE Chairman Kennedy Kachwanya

The Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE) has been existence for 5 years and has influenced the growth of blogging in Kenya. I sat down with Kennedy Kachwaya, BAKE chairman, to find out more about the future of the organization.

1. What does your role at BAKE entail?

My role is to ensure that BAKE as an organization runs smoothly, and more importantly to figure out the long term survival of BAKE. In that sense I do a lot of marketing for the BAKE commercial arm BML (Bloggers Media Limited) as well as do a lot of training for BAKE members and non-members.

2. Why was there a need to start BAKE and what has BAKE achieved since then?

Before 2010/11, over 90% of the content done about Kenya and Africa in general was by foreigners. Majority of them did and still do the content about Africa from faraway places like New York and London. In all fairness, they have no idea what is happening in Kenya but again you can’t blame them if locals aren’t doing much. I thought it was a good idea then to come up with an organization to help promote the creation of local content online. At the same time, we were brainstorming on ways to bring bloggers together. You know, strength in numbers. So yes there was need to start BAKE at that time and a need to keep it going now.

Our achievement so far include: an increase of local content versus foreign content. I am happy to say that 4 years down the line, 90% of the content done about Kenya is by Kenyans. I must say that there are many other people including the Government who have contributed towards the turn around, but we are proud of the work we have done to so far to promote creation of local content online.

We have also helped a number of bloggers to turn their blogs into small businesses and hence earn a living through blogging. Some of them have even employed other young bloggers to write for them so we have also helped in job creation.

Last May we held our fourth Kenyan Blog Awards, and so far it has been a success. BAKE’s commercial arm BML (Bloggers Media Limited), has connected many of our members with different opportunities, ranging from jobs with advertisers and other organization looking to work with bloggers.

3. What are the benefits of being a BAKE member?

This is usually hard a question because the benefits of being a BAKE member are many and some of them cannot be adequately described in words. I would say that the main benefits are:

• Training- BAKE offer trainings for members in all aspects of blogging and social media. We also do training on issues that are important to bloggers as content creators such as the law and the internet.
• Connections – BAKE connects great publishers with great brands.
• Networking- Through BAKE events, bloggers get the opportunity to network among themselves as well as meet other interesting people.

4. How does BAKE sustain its operations? (What is the difference between BAKE and BML?)

BAKE sustains its operations from the money earned through BML (Bloggers Media Limited is the commercial arm of BAKE). BAKE also carries out blogging and social media training for corporates, NGOs and Government agencies. On top of that, BAKE has one specific project called Kenya Monitor (monitor.co.ke) which is funded by Hivos.

5. What challenges does BAKE face?

There is one that comes to mind immediately. BAKE’s plan to take blogging outside Nairobi has been successful so far. We have trained quite a number of bloggers and social media users in many different places around the country. But to be able to cover the whole country, we need more resources which we still don’t have at the moment.

6. What are you most proud of as BAKE chairman?

The number of bloggers that we have trained especially outside Nairobi and the quality and quantity of content being created online by Kenyans.

7. What are your thoughts on perceived government and big business intolerance against bloggers who don’t tow the line and that perhaps BAKE is a beneficiary and therefore muffled in this debate?

That is a weird statement especially the part of BAKE being a beneficiary. How is BAKE a beneficiary of intolerance towards the bloggers from anyone? First, let is make it clear that there is no member of BAKE who has been in trouble with the law and BAKE stood by without helping him or her. If you know any, I would be glad to get all the details of the case.

As for the others we are not just sitting by. When Abraham Mutai was arrested, he was not a BAKE member but we started the Twitter campaign and rallied our members to help out. At the same time we paid his legal cost in full.  Following that incident we engaged the Advocate of the High Court, Mr. Mugambi Laibuta to help train bloggers on the law and the internet. Article19 has also joined us on that Project and they will be part of it going forward. We have done the trainings in Nairobi, Nyeri, Kisumu and we are heading to Nakuru and Mombasa next. There is one important thing we have noted so far however. Our normal BAKE trainings which include how to make money online are usually full while the law and internet trainings are attended by mostly lawyers and those within the civil societies. Most bloggers tend to stay off such trainings, which is unfortunate in many ways.

The reason why we carry out such trainings is for bloggers to understand their rights but at the same time we don’t want to see people writing things which are based on guess work or without facts. At the end of the day, we feel that if you write something and you have all the facts, then the law will be on your side.

Finally, let me say that BAKE’s way of doing things is about delivering tangible results, and not about shouting. So when there is an issue, we look around on how to sort it out and not necessarily shout about it. So at times we might not be seen to be active on a debate but we are working on the background to help out.

8. What would you say to some of the complaints against BAKE such as little inclusivity as far as bloggers are concerned and that BAKE and the BAKE Awards are skewed towards corporates?

BAKE is open to all Kenyan Bloggers and even Kenyans who are abroad and are creating content about Kenya. So I don’t see how someone would say they are not included in our programs or agenda but we are ready to listen and if there is something that we should change to enable the organization to serve the interest of bloggers better, then we will do it.

Now the part of BAKE Awards being skewed towards corporates is not making sense. I mean, the Awards is for the bloggers and yes we have the corporate category but that is it. In the last awards, there is one blog which is run by a corporate that won a certain category and that was pointed out to us immediately. We will take steps to ensure that is not the case again. At the moment, you also have to realize that there are some blogs that are becoming corporates on their own merits, so there are many factors that we have to think about as we move forward.

9. Where do you want to see BAKE in the 5 years?

First, I would like to see BAKE in every part of this country in the next two years. From there the next focus will be an Africa wide network.