Author: Giza Mdoe

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.…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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 U.S. has announced that at least two of Zimbabwe’s national banks are now allowed to operate without sanctions. The Office of Foreign Assets Control which operates under the US Treasury Department said Zimbabwe’s Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe and the Agricultural Development Bank of Zimbabwe are now removed from its black list. It is now almost 20 years of sanctions for Zimbabwe so this development comes as a breath of fresh air for the otherwise economically suffocating country. The U.S., backed by the European Union imposed the sanctions back in 2002. Ever since then, several state organs like the…

In an interesting development, while demand for gold is on the rise all over the world, gold output in Zimbabwe has fallen 17 percent in the last four months. Why? Well, because of Covid-19. Strange because it is a result of the pandemic that world demand for gold is on the rise as people try to store the value of their money in gold. Yet in Zimbabwe, small scale miners in the country are failing to conduct their mining activities because the country does not have the needed cash to buy mining inputs. Well let’s not say the country doesn’t…

As hotels in East Africa are closing their doors as the effects of the global pandemic continue to bite, Tanzania is making moves to ward off the negative effects of Covid-19 by resuming business as usual, including in its tourism and hospitality sector. In fact only this past week, Tanzania has announced that it will host its first Mafia Island Tourism Exhibition Week. The ambitious and bold move is in line with other measures that the country is taking to revive its tourism sector. The country has already set aside millions of dollars to improve tourists experience at one of…

Zimbabwe is on the verge of another economic crump 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 lockdown for the third month running, and now, the pandemic is really taking a dire toll on the economy. Well, it is not the coronovirus 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…