Author: Giza Mdoe

At a time when physical contact is discouraged due to spread of coronavirus, Tanzania’s little town of Kilimanjaro, has set up Automated Teller Machines (ATM) for the sale of milk. There is little human contact involved apart from the exchange of money making the machines a vital game changer in curbing spread of the virus.

The move has set a global precedence in the use of digital telecommunication for commercial purposes.  What stands out is the fact that the technology has not been set up in the bustling urban town of Dar es Salaam but rather on the outskirts in the small town.

“This is what technology is for…it not only for the urban centers, it should be used to make life easier in rural areas as well, and the set up of automated milk dispensers in rural Kilimanjaro is a good example,” says milk producer Ivan Mangesi.

Ivan is …

Tanzania has eventually allowed teenage mothers to return to school after the World Bank approved a USD500 million loan as support for the improvement of Tanzania’s education system.

Tanzania had until now denied pregnant girls to return to school after delivery and to push it to change its mind, for over the last two years, the World Bank withheld the requested loan in a bid to push Tanzania to ease the law.

Tanzania’s President John Magufuli is known to hold a hard stance against pregnant teenagers returning to school after delivery. As a result, activists in the country and abroad signed petitions against the World Bank funding the country’s education programs.

Now two years down the road, the World Bank’s board has reversed its stance and approved the loan. While the International Development Association is in support of the loan approval, other international donors like the US cautioned strongly against …

Tanzania has released reprinted versions of several denominations of the country’s banknotes. The new banknotes are meant to be more secure against duplication and forgery.

The new security features include the removal of the classic thin stripe in the old banknote, called the motion thread and replacing it with a rolling star.

The former security feature (the motion thread) used a motion image that had special colour effects when the note is moved side to side.

The new feature now, the rolling star, also has a movement and color change trait, but makes wavy motions when the note is tilted.

The central bank, the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) announced early April that the change affects denominations of TZS 2000, 5000 and 10000.

The last time the BoT changed the country’s banknotes was in 2010. The central bank’s Governor Professor Florens Luoga explained in a press statement that the re-printed banknotes …

The economic impact of fake and substandard oil on the global economy is valued in the billions of dollars. The business is tempting, it has cheap overhead and high profits and so the black market for fake goods is growing .

The counterfeits black market affects all types of good, from food products to toys, to cosmetics to jet fuels, you name it, it has a counterfeit.

In Kenya, millions of litres of crude oil has been barred from entering the country via an oil tanker on April Fools. News of the cargo ship, No. K07/2020 has just been released to local media saying was the oil tanker, MT Ocean Tiara belongs to a subsidiary company of a Nigerian oil giant and was seized after it berthed at Mombasa port waiting to moor and dump the fuel.

The tanker and its cargo have several discrepancies and the long arm of …

For the year 2020, Ethiopia is gearing up to open its first Stock Exchange market in over 45 years. With it, Africa will add one more stock exchange floor under its belt bringing the total number of working bourse on the continent to 30.

Almost half a century ago, back in the 70s, there was vibrant share trading at the National Bank of Ethiopia. That was in fact, one of the first, if not the very first, trading floor on the continent. Well, at least one that was not under colonial rule that is.

Now, some 45 years later after the Derg took down what would have inevitably been Africa’s main stock trading floor, Ethiopia is well on its way to re-establishing the trading floor.

Ethiopia becomes the 30^th of Africa’s 51 countries to establish a stock trading institute under the auspices of the government. For one of the …

Tanzania has set regional precedence by establishing an atomic energy commission and gone ahead to start construction of a state-of-the-art laboratory designed to manage use of radioactive materials.

In Sub-Sahara Africa, the country is only second to South Africa in this frontier and has already begun the first phase of construction works. Valued at TShs2.5bn (US$1.1mn) the first phase of the lab construction began last year and is designed to meet global operation and calibration standards in atomic and nuclear energy.

It may come as a surprise to you as it did to me to learn of this rather unsettling development; a third world country building an atomic management laboratory to rival world standards. Well, that is the case until you learn that this third world country is also gearing up to start mining uranium.

This explanation is plausible, as we have been predisposed to this reality by Hollywood blockbuster …

Trade among East African Community (EAC) member has suffered a catastrophic blow losing USD380 million in the span of just a single week.

There is not an economy that has not taken a hit from the coronavirus pandemic and the EAC trade bloc is no exception. While no official order has been issued to close their borders, each of the EAC member countries has limited all manner of movement, goods included.

Trucks are still going through to deliver goods but as Tanzania and Burundi agreed last week, the truck drivers would stay quarantined for 14 days. While for Kenya on the other hand, the country has chosen to escort the drivers and their tracks to their points of drop off and back, no detours allowed.

While cargo on transit has been forced to slow down to almost a snail pace, movement of people has come to a complete stop, if …

The construction industry in Tanzania contributed an average of 13.6% to Tanzania’s GDP over the last two years representing a whopping USD6billion.

The government of Tanzania has dedicated more than a quarter (25.4%) of its annual national budget to infrastructure development projects. With such high stakes, the construction sector now offers new investment and employment opportunities for Tanzanian youth.

Meet Michael Kimei, the 33 year old young entrepreneur and born again Christian. Mr. Kimei is Owner and Manager of Aggregate Crushing Ltd, a construction company in Tanzania, the epitome of youth self employment.

“I have had passion for business ever since I was a child, and as a God fearing man and a firm believer of the gospel of Jesus Christ, my work is centered around living a God ordained life and putting hard work towards setting up my own business and taking it to golden heights for the glory …

After three decades of austerity measures on Somalia, the otherwise economically embattled East African nation is now, 30 years later, in good standing with the World Bank.

Well, before we start tipping our hats, let’s put ‘good standing’ in perspective, Somalia is now in good enough standing to receive grants but it is yet to get to economic stability that would warrant it WB loans.

To put it in the words of the World Bank, the international lender is now ready to ‘normalize relations’ with Somalia. The bank credited turning the new leaf with Somalia on its reasonably strong record of fiscal and political reforms over the last few years.

As World Bank’s Country Manager for Somalia, Mr. Hugh Riddell was quoted mid this month, good relations means that “…going forward, Somalia will be able to access grants to finance poverty reduction.”

In his media brief, the WB country executive …

Micro financing is the go to solution for small businesses as banks tighten lending conditions to stifle Non Performing Loans (NPLs). In Tanzania, as elsewhere, NPLs are no longer a problem for individual banks, rather a national economic problem managed by the Central Bank.

The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) now provides guidelines for banks to curb NPLs and to help, it has created what is referred to as Credit Reference Bureaus. These bureaus are meant to protect banks against bad credit or more directly, to protect them against bad debtors.

In Tanzania, there are now two credit reference bureaus both meant to protect banks from crippling NPLs. Rather than deal with recovery of bad loans, the bureaus are meant to keep banks from lending to potentially ‘bad debtors.’

Unchecked NPLs could bring a bank to closure, that means affecting all other bank customers, now multiply that across several banks and …