Author: Giza Mdoe

That year, in 2015, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania settled for a three-year plan to phase out the importation of used clothes, a major exporter been the United States. To realise the intended ban, taxes were increased on second-hand clothes were increased effectively deterring their importation. The plan was to completely ban the import of second-hand clothes as of 2019.

This ambitious vision was never realized as the Trump administration issued an ultimatum for EAC to rescind the ban on second-hand clothes by 23 February 2018 or, as the DW writer Isaac Mugabi puts it ‘face the consequences.’

If death could be bribed, the rich men would never die, this old African saying has come to life as new light is shown on Ugandan doctors over charging Covid-19 patients for treatment. After all, once diagnosed, one is ready to pay any amount to rid themselves of the dreaded virus, so the doctors put two and two together and charge more. Here is the shocking and even upsetting if not downright despicable testimonial of a patient who was been swindled after he was diagnosed positive of Covid-19. He speaks of what happens as he is admitted in to a…

Diamonds maybe forever but gold is the stand of measure for and store of wealth and in this Covid-19 era the  skittish investor is not storing his wealth in cash currency but gold nuggets. It is no wonder, the world’s second largest gold digger Barrick Gold Corporation is planning to increase its investment in Tanzania’s gold mining sector. Barrick is already Tanzania’s largest gold miner owning three major sites North Mara, Bulyanhulu and Buzwagi mines. While gold is its main business, the company wishes to go beyond the boundaries of the coveted precious metal and, as Barrick President and…

Observed every 7 July, Tanzania’s Saba Saba annual trade fair has this year climaxed with a three day meeting by traders and government officials from Kenya and Tanzania. The event lasts about a week before the apex on the 7th of every July. This year, the end of the fair has marked the start of a meeting on trade promotion and market access between the two countries. The meeting comes in the wake of Presidential commitments made by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan and the just concluded bilateral negotiations on trade between the two States.…

Ethiopia plans to go ahead with it scheduled second filling of its embattled Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). When complete, the GERD will be the largest in Africa and have the capacity to produce in excess of 6,000 MW per day. As expected, Egypt, the historic colonial-era custodian, will not have it and along with Sudan, has called for intervention by the African Union (AU) as well as international bodies and the UN Security Council citing security reasons. Egypt and Sudan want the UN Security Council to intervene in the GERD owing to what the Sudanese government describes as ‘its impact on the…

To celebrate this year’s Day of the African Child, the NGO, Kitamu Africa is conducting a campaign to raise funds for a water project that will benefit over 50 orphans at the Canaan Children Home in Arusha, Tanzania. The children’s center was set up and registered in 2013 by the archdiocese of KKKT (Catholic Church) to help vulnerable orphans that lost their parents to Aids and who were also unfortunately born with the virus. “Out of the 51 children at the center, 25 of the children are living with HIV,” details Dr. Alex Lengeju, the Director of Canaan Children Home.…

If the former President of Tanzania, the late Dr. John Magufuli was nicknamed bulldozer for his strong, unwavering will in controlling the public sector, the incumbent soft-spoken President Samia Hassan is in no way any softer; on the contrary, she has a hawk eye on the public sector. Most evident is the proposed fiscal law, the Finance Bill of 2021, which now requires at least three major public companies to relinquish their revenue to the Central Bank and to await their expense funding from a central government operator to be dished out in line with their annual approved budgets. Also…

Covid 19 wreaked havoc to the economy and no sector was worse hit than the tourism and hospitality sector. Air travel restrictions, mandatory quarantine of arrivals and the shutting of businesses in the tourism and hospitality sectors along with crumple of demand have led to an unprecedented shock. So bad was the situation that last year, tourism operators in Tanzania forecast revenue contractions of 80% or more while the World Bank’s 14th Tanzania Economic Update (TEU) showed that Tanzania’s economic growth slowed down to 2.5% from the 6.9% growth reported the previous year. (santacruzcore.com) But there is light at the end of the…

After suffering turbulence for the last few years, South African Airways (SAA), which was on the brink of being grounded, has got new wings from none other than the hands of the private sector. SAA, South Africa’s flagship carrier links well over 40 local and international destinations across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania. The carrier was also the first African carrier to sign with Star Alliance back in April 2006. However, after a few years of struggling to stay afloat, the airline faced a lot of criticism and the final blow was the Covid-19 outbreak that literally anchored…

With $571 million in loan money at stake, Tanzania that has until now withheld all Covid-19 data has announced that it will now make the statistics public. Question is, if withholding the data stayed public panic and allowed production to continue?  How will announcing the data affect the country’s economy? Will the public continue to operate business as usual or will fear impede productivity? There is no doubt that Tanzania is one of the few countries in the world that had positive economic growth all through the worst of Covid-19 outbreaks. Granted the rate of growth fell, but it remained…