The $2,500 chair

Each and every one of Kenya's MPs will soon be sitting on one of these red chairs in the newly refurbished parliament. Each chair costs 200,000 Kenyan shillings, or almost $2,500. They have been made by prisoners at the Kamiti maximum security jail.


352 chairs have been ordered, so the total cost for MPs to rest their behinds during parliamentary sessions will be 70 million Kenyan shillings, close to $880,000. I don't know how much, if any, of this fee will go to the prisoners.


Kenya's speaker of parliament, Kenneth Marende, has defended the cost of the red chairs. He says Kenyan MPs need what he describes as "quality seats".