Author: Jack Oduor

• Africa Fertiliser Financing Mechanism will avail 8000 tons of fertiliser.
• 5.533 million Kenyan farmers are registered for the government’s subsidised fertiliser programme.
• African Development Bank granted Kenya $67 million in 2022-2023 through its African Emergency Food Production Facility.

The Africa Fertiliser Financing Mechanism has launched a project to help deliver 8,000 tons of fertilisers to 100,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya to boost harvests and incomes.

Through its Fertiliser Financing for Sustainable Agriculture Management Project, the Mechanism will provide a $2 million partial trade credit guarantee and a grant of $219,000 to Apollo Agriculture Limited, a Kenyan corporation, to facilitate the company’s fertiliser sales.

The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, through a contribution of $10.15 million to the Africa Fertiliser Financing Mechanism, is also supporting the project.

Representatives of the African Development Bank, which manages the Mechanism, Apollo Agriculture and the Kenyan and Norwegian governments attended the launch event in Nairobi.…

• Kenya’s high-interest rates hit 13 per cent in the last review by the Central Bank of Kenya.
• Since mid-2023, however, the World Bank’s index of commodity prices has remained essentially unchanged.
• World Bank reiterates that between mid-2022 and mid-2023, global commodity prices plummeted by nearly 40 per cent.

Kenyan consumers will have to bear the high cost of borrowing for much longer as Central Banks will not loosen their monetary policies any time soon, the World Bank has said.

The lender says the continued tightening will be a result of the prevalent global economic shocks, such as the Middle East conflict, which is threatening to halt the inflationary decline that has occurred in the past two years.

“Global commodity prices are leveling off after a steep descent that played a decisive role in whittling down overall inflation last year,” the World Bank says in its latest commodity markets outlook. “However,

• Kenya-Ethiopia trade relations have been on the rise in the past 27 years, with Kenya having the upper hand. 
• Ethiopia, on the other hand, recorded an increase at an annualised rate of 23.7 per cent.
• During the Meeting Kenyan investors also undertook exhibitions showcasing some of their products.

Kenya and Ethiopia have renewed the push to streamline the bottlenecks that are hampering trade growth between the two states. A delegation of the National Assembly to the Kenya-Ethiopia Trade and Investment Mission held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has rooted for the speedy removal of bottlenecks hampering cross-border trade between both Nations.

Kenya and Ethiopia have engaged in bilateral trade across multiple sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and services, with the balance of trade hugely in favour of Kenya. In 2022, Kenya exported $95.1M (Sh12.8billion) to Ethiopia, mainly Palm Oil $12.4M (Sh1.7billion), Metal Stoppers $7.95M (Sh1.1billion), and Yeast $6.92M (Sh934million).

This compares …

• TLcom Capital has raised $154 million  in its second Fund, TIDE Africa II
• With this second fund, TLcom Capital maintains its early-stage, multi-sector focus and expands its mandate beyond Sub-Saharan Africa to Egypt.
• TLcom Capital currently has over $300 million under management.

TLcom Capital, the Africa-focused venture capital firm, announced the final close of TIDE Africa Fund II, its second fund for technology in Africa, at $154 million. Confirming TLcom Capital’s status as Africa’s largest Seed and Series A investor, the new fund accelerates the firm’s mission to partner with elite founders to tackle Africa’s biggest and most complex challenges with innovative solutions that will unlock massive value in the continent’s critical sectors.

At more than twice the size of TLcom Capital’s first fund, TIDE Africa Fund II is oversubscribed and sees participation from several new, high-profile LPs alongside returning LPs from the firm’s first Africa-focused fund, TIDE Africa Fund …

• AfDB asks policymakers to put in place an orderly and predictable way of dealing with Africa’s $824Bn debt pile.
• According to AfDB, Africa’s ballooning external debt reached $824 billion in 2021.
• AfDB president says there is urgent need for increased concessional financing, particularly for low-income countries. 

Africa’s immense economic potential is being undermined by non-transparent resource-backed loans that complicate debt resolution and compromise countries’ future growth, African Development Bank (AfDB) President Dr Akinwumi Adesina has said.

Adesina at the Semafor Africa Summit taking place on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank 2024 Spring Meetings, highlighted the challenges posed by Africa’s ballooning external debt, which reached $824 billion in 2021, with countries dedicating 65 per cent of their GDP to servicing these obligations.

He said the continent would pay $74 billion in debt service payments this year alone, a sharp increase from $17 billion in 2010. “I …

• Cairo, Egypt, holds third place after Athens and Manilla, Philippines.
• India stands out, with three cities being included in the world’s top 10 most stressed cities.
• Los Angeles, US, holds the ninth place with the highest obesity rate on the list.

Experts conducted a study to identify the most stressful cities to live in 2024.  The study measured several parameters including the quality of life, safety, and pollution index as main criteria, also considering the presence of stress-related habits such as smoking rates, obesity, and alcohol consumption. The final score was made, considering all of the mentioned criteria.

The most stressed city in the world is Athens, Greece, with the highest stress levels, which include a low safety index and a high rate of stress-related habits such as smoking, over-eating, and alcohol consumption. Compared to other cities on the list, Athens has the highest smoking rate, with 31.3 per cent …

• Survey shows 60% of journalists interviewed indicate that their newsroom lacks an AI use case policy.
• However, 20% of journalists revealed that they are planning to explore AI’s potential applications.
• State of Journalism Survey 2024 interviewed 1,106 respondents  across the world.

Media houses are still lagging behind in the push for AI adoption in their line of work with a majority failing to institute AI policies in newsrooms. This is according to a recent survey conducted by Muck Rack delving into the current landscape of journalism, revealing notable trends and concerns among journalists across the industry.

From the findings, 60 per cent of the surveyed journalists indicated that their newsroom lacks an AI use case policy, while only 24 per cent reported having one in place.

This raises questions about whether the absence of policies hinders journalists from exploring AI tools or if other factors, such as a lack of …

• The increasing food prices have majorly occasioned the rise in consumer expenditure. 
• In the review period, 50 per cent of the Kenyans polled indicated static income levels over the last year
• 53 per cent of Kenyans polled allocated less than 10 per cent of their income to travel and leisure expenditures.

• Kenya Ports Authority handled 37,576 metric tons  of cargo in 2023, according to its Managing Director.
• The KPA MD revealed the gantry cranes were procured to the tune of $31,493,808
• One of the notable recent investments by KPA is the construction of the second phase of the Lamu Port.

The Lamu port is poised to become a key driver of economic growth and regional integration, according to industry players.

Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) Managing Director Captain William Ruto said the impressive statistics underscore the vital role that the Lamu port plays in facilitating trade and driving growth in the region.

He added that this results from its container capacity of 1.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) across its three berths of 4000 meters each.

 “The Lamu facility is poised to become a key driver of economic growth and regional integration,” he pointed out.

Captain Ruto disclosed last year that …

• Level of remote desktop protocol abuse unprecedented since launch of report in 2020.
• External remote services were the number-one way attackers initially breached networks.
• Remote Desktop Protocol is a Microsoft proprietary protocol that enables remote connections to other computers.

Cybercriminals have resorted to the use of remote desktop protocol in executing their attacks on systems according to new findings by Sophos. The Sophos Active Adversary Report for 2024 shows that cybercriminals heavily exploited remote desktop protocol (RDP) in 90 per cent of attacks, marking the highest incidence of RDP abuse since Sophos started these reports in 2021 covering data from 2020.

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a Microsoft proprietary protocol that enables remote connections to other computers,

The report further says that external remote services such as RDP were the most common vector by which attackers initially breached networks; they were the method of initial access in 65 percent of …