Author: Giza Mdoe

U.S. dollar is muscling it up against gold, but the precious metal just wont let up, not with the threat of a second Covid-19 outbreak as new cases emerge.

In Africa, the big gold miners, Tanzania is one of the countries that made some good money out of the increased demand for gold during the height of the Covid-19 global pandemic. However, over the past month, World market prices for gold declined slightly due to decrease in global demand as economies begin to stabilize

Actually, the prices for several selected commodities were lower in the year ended March than in the preceding month with the exception of Arabica coffee,” reports the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) monthly economic review.

As economies start opening up, Tanzania gold export is expected to remain strong however gold futures reported a second loss in a row at the end of June. This slight dip by …

Amid strong demand for automotive vehicles, several domestic and foreign manufacturers are planning to expand their production bases in Tanzania. Government of Tanzania also prioritizes the automotive segment as a key revenue generator and is encouraging flow of FDIs in automotive industry – Tanzania Automotive Market, Size, Share, Outlook and Growth Opportunities 2020-2026 (Report)

Tanzania is one of the most promising and fastest growing automobile markets in the region. Tanzania automobile industry is supported by multiple factors such as labour availability, R&D efforts, geographic advantage and government support.

With positive outlook for economy and greater household purchasing power, the automobile sales in the country are set to witness strong surge in sales.

Meet Mr. Edwin Mac Temba the CEO of Mac Auto Express Garage in Dar es Salaam. He gives The Exchange an exclusive breakdown of how the subsector is performing, how it survived during the corona virus outbreak and …

The year started out as very promising, Nigeria’s crude oil and gas export sales revenue hit a record USD434.85 million in January. That was apparently the best the sector would do this year. It is estimated that the country’s oil revenue is likely to decline by 80 percent this year.  In fact oil export volume is projected to fall to 1.3 million barrels per day.

For a country where oil represents 90 percent of the country’s exports, 30 percent of bank credits and 50 percent of fiscal revenues, an 80 percent fall (USD17 billion) spells doom not only for the sector but the economy as a whole.

The prediction is made by the country’s high profile and member of the Economic Advisory Council, Mr. Bismarck Rewane in a report titled: “Making Hay While the Sun Has Set.”

“The federal government is struggling with the reduction and elimination of subsidies without …

Zimbabwe is on the verge of another economic cramp that is bound to be far worse than what it has been suffering for the last decade.

Already, the nation has been on an indefinite national lock down for the third month running, and now, the pandemic is really taking a dire toll on the economy. Well, it is not the Coronavirus effect that is bound to doom Zimbabwe into an economic crunch (yet again).   Rather, it is the country’s tendency to simply print money whenever it deems fit; if only life were so easy!

Zimbabwe, like all other countries, is looking to cushion its business sector from the coronavirus crunch. However, the way Zimbabwe is looking to fund its proposed US$ 998.34 million (ZW$18 Billion) stimulus package is if anything, questionable, if not downright inadvisable, or to be blunt, shall we just go ahead and call it, rudimentary?

Well, how …

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought the weight of social unrest upon almost all big economies around the world and in Africa, it has spark the Africa Lives Matter movement.

Protesters in the US, UK, France, Germany, Africa and elsewhere have caused huge economic impact during their protests and brought to light even larger economic inequalities that are bound to cause a major power shift in the years to come.

While the death of George Floyd in the hands of police wrought on the US political convulsion, it is the economic inequalities that have a lasting and profound effect. Issues of housing, education, health and employment have been pushed to the forefront of the national consciousness.

Take for instance the fact that in just one US city, the cream of the pie, the top 1 percent of New York’s elite actually earns well over 40 times more than the …

After slow production during the Covid-19 lock down,  Zimbabwe’s gold sector has had a drastic come back reporting gold revenue is up almost 50 percent at least one of its major mines.

The total revenue recorded for the second quarter of 2020 clocked and impressive to USD23. 6 million, that is almost double (48 percent) the revenue brought in during the same period last year.

Having topped last year’s production by USD15. 9 million, Blanket Gold Mine that is based in the Gwanda region, increased production all through the first quarter this despite glitches caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The mine is owned by the Caledonia Mining Corporation and was proud to announce it had produced 14,233 ounces of gold in the second quarter up from the 11,948 produced during the same period last year.

The production level is very impressive given the fact that other miners could not access …

Ethiopia’s Jobs Creation Commission has partnered with the MasterCard Foundation to conduct a US$11.8 million job creation initiative dubbed Enabling Ethiopia.

 The five-year project is meant to serve as one of the country’s implementing tools for Ethiopia’s Plan of Action for Job Creation (PAJC – 2020-2025). The project aims at fostering innovation, policy reform, inclusiveness and advocacy.

The ambitious project looks to create some 14 million jobs by 2025 by creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem, cultivating the necessary human capital, adopting pro-job macro policies, and supporting inclusive innovations; these are just some of the major focus areas of this long-term plan.

The goal is to have a private sector-led economy that is coordinated and supported by the government.  The project aims to support the adoption of job-rich macro policies and the implementation of innovative job creation programs.

To achieve this, the initiative acknowledges the need to build capacity of implementing …

Kenya is heavily in debt; granted it is not the only East African country to find itself neck deep in debt but it certainly is the only one trying to raise the debt ceiling, every subsequent administration.

Last year, President Kenyatta appointed a new economist to lead the country’s National Treasury and just like his predecessor, his first order of business was to seek constitutional amendment so that the country could borrow more.

As of October 2019, Kenya’s legislators had been swayed to raise the country’s debt ceiling to USD 84.5 billion (Sh9 trillion). All is good when the money is flowing in, but when the roosters come home to roost and the cash flow takes an outward projector, the weight of it all starts to sink in.

That is where Kenya has found itself—smack in the middle of paying a whopping USD8.5 billion (Sh904.7 billion) in debt servicing. Even …

Kenya is facing the daunting task of paying China a piling amount that it owes for the Chinese funded multibillion dollar Standard Gauge Railway (SGR).

Only a short while ago, the National Treasury asked parliament to allow it some US$940 million dollars to make its latest installment to pay to China.

After millions of dollars have been dumped into the Kenyan ambitious SGR project, now Kenya wants China back on the discussion table to revisit the terms.   Sources say the amount covers interest and principal installments invested by the Chinese government and other entities including the Chinese Exim Bank and the China Development Bank.

It is no surprise that the Kenyan lawmakers want a sit-down with their Chinese counterparts to discuss the payment because the SGR is not making as much money as was projected.  The plan was for the railway to carry goods from Mombasa port into landlocked Africa. …

At the onset of the pandemic, the two countries, like all others in the region and elsewhere in the world, Tanzania and Kenya closed their borders, for a while. However it soon dawned on both that closing their borders from each other (and their neighbours) was but a band-aid solution.

The underlying trade logistics are already so entwined that no country could do without the other, short of losing hard-gained economic ground. So, no sooner had they closed their borders than the two countries were forced to reopen them.

That is where the third set of complications surfaced; the first — the onset of the coronavirus — was not through any fault of the countries. The second — the closure of their borders in line with international recommendations — was in response to the first, and the third was the lack of a concerted, joint response.

It is the third …