Author: Caroline Muriuki

Egypt’s annual urban consumer inflation rose to 7.2 per cent in January from 7.1 per cent in December, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) said. From December, it announced that month on month urban headline inflation stood at 0.7 per cent adding that Inflation remains within Egypt’s Central Bank of a target range of 9 per cent, plus or minus 3 percentage points. The CBE announced that Egypt’s core inflation increased to 2.7% in January from 2.4% in December. Consumer prices decreased to 0.2% in December after decreasing to 0.3% in November. Also Read: Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan…

The Middle East and Comesa have become the leading export markets for Ugandan goods, according to the Bank of Uganda(BoU) report for the year ended December 2019. The two markets and others in East Africa, Europe and America saw a 10.1 increase in Uganda’s exports for the period under review. During the period, the Comesa, Middle East and (Common Market for East and Southern Africa) each fetched earnings of $1.2 billion. According to some experts, the increasing exports to the Middle East is mainly due to the growing gold exports, specifically to the United Arab Emirates. Also Read: Uganda growth could…

The African Economic Outlook 2020 report prepared by the African Development Bank was praised at the 33rd African Union Summit in Addis Ababa for being an effective blueprint for addressing Africa’s human capacity gap. The 2020 report, under the theme Developing Africa’s workforce of the future, was presented at a side event attended by civil society, policymakers, global and regional development organizations, the media and academia. “The facts mentioned in the second part of this report are striking. It reminds us of the size of the investment that must be made in the development of human capital in Africa, an…

South Africa has fallen to third place due to its constrained economic growth according to RMB’s “2020 Where to Invest in Africa” report. But the country still holds its place as Africa’s bastion of a well-developed financial and capital market. The report said the JSE remained Africa’s most liquid stock exchange with an excess of $1.4 billion traded daily. Which is much higher than Egypt’s Cairo Stock Exchange which trades $44 million a day. According to RMB report, South Africa also ranked highly on other financial market depth measures such as private credit as a percentage of gross domestic product…

The South African Airways (SAA) will stop all its flights to Entebbe International Airport effective end of this month. February flight schedule for remains unchanged though. The move is part of the airline restructuring plan intended to support its transformation into a profitable and sustainable business. “On 29th February, SAA will close the following regional and international services from Johannesburg to Abidjan via Accra, Entebbe, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Luanda, Munich, Ndola, and Sao Paulo,” the joint Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs) of SAA announced yesterday in a press statement published on the company website. Despite the airline ceasing some flights, it…

Qatar Airways is in talks to buy a 49 per cent stake in RwandAir, its chief executive said. Qatar Airways is also interested in doubling its holding in LATAM Airlines Group to 20 per cent with an objective of having equal stake with Delta Air Lines in LATAM. Although no details have yet been revealed, like the amount of money Qatar airways is spending on the stake, the purchase will mean the government of Rwanda will remain with a controlling stake of 51 per cent in the airline. Industry analysts say for both airlines the deal is a win-win situation…

Audit firms in Uganda are still producing poor audit reports that are tarnishing the image of local audit firms, a survey by the Institute Certified of Public Accountants of Uganda (ICPAU) on the quality of audit firms has shown. To reverse the poor auditing situation, the ICPAU –which is the steering committee on audit, says the audit firms must put in measures that will enable them to conduct proper auditing and produce quality reports. Presenting the committee’s survey results during the accountants’ Practitioners’ Forum the managing Partner of Jim Roberts & Associate, Mr Julius Tumuhimbise said the Institute’s Audit Quality…

Provide young people with new skills that will meet the needs of a 21st-century labour market, African Development Bank report urges. African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said the youth must be prepared for the jobs of the future not the jobs of the past. “Given the fast pace of change, driven by the 4th industrial revolution – from artificial intelligence to robotics, machine learning, quantum computing – Africa must invest more in re-directing and re-skilling its labour force, and especially the youth, to effectively participate,” the Bank president said. Also Read: Ride the wave of the African Continental Free…

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo yesterday gave a go-ahead for the construction of two solar power plants in Kaleo and Lawra, under the 17MW peak solar power project. According to Ghana’s president, the project confirms the commitment of his government to diversify Ghana’s energy generation portfolio and in the long run, help increase the renewable energy component of the energy mix and contribute to the fight against the effects of climate change. The €22.8 million 17MW solar power project is being funded by the German Government’s Development Bank, KfW. There is still ongoing construction of the Pwalugu Multipurpose Dam and…

Africa’s economic growth remained stable in 2019 at 3.4% and is on course to pick up to 3.9% in 2020, and 4.1% in 2021 as revealed in the African Development Bank’s 2020 African Economic Outlook. The bank said that the slower than expected growth is partly due to the moderate expansion Africa’s Big five such as Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa – whose joint growth rate compared with the average of 4.0% for the rest of the continent was at an average rate of 3.1%. In 2019, investment expenditure for the first time in a decade accounted for…