To feed his family, a man needs to enter the kitchen

I was waiting on a meeting a few days when an item in the Daily Nation caught my eyes.

Ordinarily it shouldn’t have, as it was tucked away at the bottom of one of the “County Roundup” pages. Barely 70 words, it was the headline that did it. “Course for ‘women’ pulls more menfolk,” it read.

The story said that, unlike in the past, more men had enrolled for a food and beverage services course offered at a Nairobi slum. In the past, the course was dominated by women, it said.

So are Kenyan men becoming more enlightened, or is this an economic move? It could be both, but one suspects that it has more to do with them smelling where the money has moved.

With increasing urbanisation, and growth in services, there will be a lot of money to be made in cooking for the growing populations in the cities. If men hope to eat in the years to come, they have to get into the kitchen.

These small changes can sometimes peak into bigger and profitable trends that are well worth watching.

A chief at chicken and feeds giant Ugachick blew my socks off a while back when he told me he thanks the gods whenever he sees new apartment blocks in Kampala, and reads reports of electricity lines being extended. New apartment blocks and electricity extension, he said, have shown a nearly perfect correlation with an increase in frozen chicken consumption.

Easy to see why. You can’t really keep a chicken in your small apartment and slaughter it on the stairs, the way you would if you lived in a bungalow with a yard. But also, demand for apartments rise in tandem with the growth of the middle class. And electricity means small shops in “remote” places can now buy fridges and keep frozen chicken for sale.

Other changes are harder to decipher. A recent photo in The EastAfrican showed a slightly chubbier Tanzanian President John Magufuli, almost clean-shaven and his little “O” beard gone. Maybe he’s enjoying the job, or had just returned from the barbershop.

Recent photos of Rwanda President Paul Kagame show a slightly greyer moustache, and hair cut much lower. Unlike Magufuli, he remains the same size he’s been for about two decades. Couldn’t read him.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, on the other hand, has had a big sartorial makeover. For a long time, his fashion sense (oversize shirts and ill-fitting trousers) was the butt of jokes on Ugandan social media by his beloved “bazukulu” (grandchildren).

He has either changed tailors, or hired a new fashion guru. His shirts are sharper, more youthful, and the trousers drape better. Facing criticism that he has overstayed his welcome after 33 years in power, and for amending the Constitution to remove the 75-year-old limit for president so he could stand in 2021, or just wanting to track better on social media, Museveni has pimped his look.

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, obviously looks more relaxed. The last term can do that to a man.

South Sudan’s Salva Kiir? We don’t see him. In Burundi, I keep seeing photos of President Pierre Nkurunziza in boots and tracksuit, in gardens digging or harvesting some crop with peasants.

He’s doubled down on being the “Avocado Man.”

Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs.