By Dr Paul Bundi Human beings are endowed with remarkable resilience, which can only be broken when they choose to give up. Says Viktor Frankl in his seminal book, Man's Search for Meaning; ''it is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future-sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in thd most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.'' Man's life is primarily driven by the desire for future, the unshakable belief that the future holds promise. We invariably cease to live when we think we have hit a dead end, or that there's nothing more to be had by living. Theoretically, there is no limit to man's achievement, and that is what drives men to wake up and strive day after day. The opposite is spiritual, psychological death, which manifests way ahead of physical death. Lesson? Losing today doesn't mean losing always. You can lose 10 times and win the 11th time. Or, you
Kenya is about to issue its first international bond, bringing a two-year odyssey to an end amid renewed appetite for emerging- and frontier-market assets—and mounting concerns over a binge of African borrowing. Officials from East Africa’s biggest economy are set to start meeting investors this week about the debut dollar bond sale. BarclaysBARC.LN -0.51%, J.P. Morgan ChaseJPM +0.14%, Standard BankSBK.JO +1.07% and QNB Capital, a unit of Qatar National Bank, are arranging the meetings, which will take place in the U.K. and the U.S.between June 5 and June 13, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Kenyan government hopes to raise about $1.5 billion in its first dollar-denominated bond. If it succeeds, it will be one of the biggest dollar bonds ever sold by an African country. But the sale has been delayed a number of times because of a 10-year-old public-procurement scandal. The Kenyan government recently lost a court case relating to a contested 1990s procurement contract and had to pay $16 million to entities that won the contract—an obstacle it said it needed to clear before issuing a bond. The payment, made in May, caused a furor in Kenya: the parliament didn’t approve it, but President Uhuru Kenyatta went ahead with it by presidential decree. The government needs to issue the bond before the end of this month to cover spending it has already committed to. Investors seem unperturbed. “The timing is really good for Kenya,” said Kevin Daly, a fund manager at Aberdeen Asset Management, which oversees about $541 billion of assets. Demand should be healthy, Mr. Daly said, but for many investors price will be key. “I’m not going to buy this in the 6.5% range. If we’re talking in the low 7%-area, maybe there would be some value,” he added.
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