In Africa, the transmission of the overwhelming complexity of the people's day-to-day experiences are deeply rooted in the continent's rich cultural artistry. Proverbs are the most widely and commonly used in the continent's long standing history of oral arts. Proverbs are regarded as repositories of the people's collective social, political and cultural wisdom and as analytic tools of thought. This paper analyses how different Kenyan politicians and political parties used proverbs to strengthen and further their respective political positions with regard to the then proposed new constitution of Kenya, during the various countrywide campaigns in public political rallies and through the media. More specifically, the paper looks at how politicians and political parties used proverbs to further their different ideologies, to woo potential voters and to discredit opposing views.

The 2011 Nigerian presidential election newspaper reports were not just to inform the public about the outcomes of the election. The representations in the newspaper reports were ideological and, by implication, judgmental. The main actors (presidential aspirants), were also represented differently. In this paper, we interrogate some linguistic tools that were used in the ideological presentation of the election and the main social actors. In other words, the paper examines whether the main social actors are included or excluded, genericised or specified; and the level of voice projection accorded to them. The study is anchored on Critical Discourse Analysis framework and it operationalises some aspects of van Leeuwen (2008) socio-semantic model and Hallidayan transitivity system in examining social actor differential representations and process types in the newspaper reports. These linguistic tools (exclusion, inclusion, individualization, assimilation, collectivization, functionalisation, appraisement and voice projection) are very pertinent because they serve as the very foundation on which further context analysis of the discourse could be based. The study observes that social actors representations and voice projection in the data do not only polarize the reportage but also lace it with bias. It also shows that the incumbent president was given more positive representation and voice projection than other aspirants.

Using the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study discusses the transfer of semantic aspects of foodsemic metaphors upon the abstraction of love. An interview schedule was administered to 48 respondents of different gender by the researchers assisted by two research assistants. The data collected were subjected to the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU). 12 foodsemic metaphors which play an indispensable role in the understanding of love in Gĩkũyũ were identified. In addition, the study noted that gender is a dominant variable that provides people with lens through which they view love in Gĩkũyũ. This study concludes that metaphor is an integral component of the way people conceptualize and embody love in Gĩkũyũ. Further, foodsemic metaphors provide a way of understanding the nexus between gender and love in Gĩkũyũ.

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Kenya, like many African countries, has faced enormous challenges in the production of and access to quality relevant teaching and learning materials and resources in her primary and secondary school classrooms. This has been occasioned by a plethora of factors which include, but are not limited to a lack of finances, tradition, competence, and experience to develop such resources. Such a situation has persisted despite the existence and availability of many Open Educational Resources (OERs) that have been developed by many education stakeholders at enormous costs. Such freely available resources could potentially improve the quality of existing resources or help to develop new courses.  Yet, their uptake and reuse in secondary and primary schools in Kenya continues to be very low. This paper reports the findings of a study in which Open Resources for English Language Teaching (ORELT) developed by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Canada, were piloted in sampled fifty (50) Kenyan secondary schools. The study applied the Model 1 – Distance and Dependence (Zhao et al 2002)  model to investigate the challenges that hinder instructors to adopt and use ORELT materials. The study reported that poor infrastructure, negative attitudes, lack of ICT competencies, and other skill gaps among teachers and lack of administrative support are some of the implementation challenges that have continued to dog the implementation, adoption and use of OERs in Kenyan schools. The findings of the present study will go a long way in providing useful insights to the developers of OERs and Kenyan education stakeholders in devising strategies of maximum utilisation of OERs in the Kenyan school system.