Author: Kimani Chege

UjuziKilimo, a data-driven agricultural technology company that is driving change in the way farmers access information and manage their food productivity is wary of the effects of Covid-19 to local agricultural production. In an era where food production and supply chains are greatly disrupted by the pandemic, the company is unveiling new structures for helping small agriculture-based businesses in Kenya.

These local small-scale farmers are set to enjoy Kshs18million worth of technical support as part of a social-economic recovery initiative by the agricultural technology solutions provider.  UjuziKilimo has received support from Wadson Ventures, an Africa-focused early-stage venture capital house to facilitate this intervention.

The partnership is moulded in form of a COVID-19 relief partnership agreement. UjuziKilimo Chief Executive officer Brian Bosire says the company will channel the support not only towards COVID-19 but also locust invasion related interventions geared at facilitating swifter agricultural production recovery.

Bosire is also expressing regret …

The effects of Covid-19 have continued being felt in the East African region despite governments developing various interventions to counter them.  Interventions have included the provision of healthcare remedies as well as stimulus plans to bail out communities who have been ravaged by the pandemic. The highlight of the inter-East African relations has been a diplomatic tiff between Kenya and Tanzania that had threatened the livelihoods of the region who depend on the two strongest economies.

The markets in the region have remained slow with the economies expected to get a hit for months to come. Various entities including the World Bank have revised their projections of the growth of the region’s economy. The triple effects of Covid-19, floods and locusts have made the economies of this region suffer greatly. Kenya has also received a negative rating by Moody based on her rising debt.

In this edition, we highlight how …

Two years ago, a 16-year-old student at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa, Ziyaan Virji, turned his project – Affordable and Accessible Sanitation for Women (AASW) -into an internationally-recognized organization. This project would go on to receive major international recognition including the Diana Award for going above and beyond his everyday life to create and sustain positive change. The Diana Award, which celebrates its 20^th anniversary this year, is considered one of the highest accolades for social action or humanitarian efforts that a young person can receive.

Ziyaan has since partnered with several organizations to improve the access to sanitary health.   Through Operation Period, the organizations has helped over 1,000 girls to acquire access to menstrual hygiene across six different countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, India, Nigeria and the UAE.

Since 2014, May 28th has been recognized as Menstrual Hygiene Day, a day to bring awareness to menstrual inequity.

International

A new mega cable capable of carrying extensive data across Africa has been announced. China Mobile International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt, Vodacom, Vodafone and WIOCC have announced that they will partner to build 2Africa.

This is expected to be the most comprehensive subsea cable to serve the African continent and Middle East region. The parties have appointed Alcatel Submarine Networks (“ASN”) to build the cable in a fully funded project which will greatly enhance connectivity across Africa and the Middle East.

At 37,000km long, 2Africa will be one of the world’s largest subsea cable projects and will interconnect Europe (eastward via Egypt), the Middle East (via Saudi Arabia), and 21 landings in 16 countries in Africa. The system is expected to go live in 2023/4, delivering more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today, with a design capacity of up to 180Tbps …

Pan African private equity company Convergence Partners has announced that it has acquired all the operations of telecommunication giant Vodacom Business Africa through its digital service provider platform, inq. Holdings Limited (formerly Synergy Communications) based in Mauritius.

Vodacom Business Africa is an enterprise-focused ICT subsidiary of the Vodacom Group. With over US$300mn of capital under management, Convergence Partners brings its skills, experience and capital to develop new investment opportunities as well as actively adding value to investments across the lifecycle of ICT assets.

The 100% acquisition of Vodacom Business Africa’s operations will be effected in Nigeria, Zambia and Cote d’Ivoire with a further planned acquisition in Cameroon pending regulatory approvals.

This transaction grows inq.’s regional footprint as a leading enterprise solutions provider to 13 cities in 7 countries across Africa including its existing operations in Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique.

Under the inq. banner the company will embark on the next …

On Sunday, May 10th, statistics from the WorldOmeter showed that New York state had recorded 41 fatalities in 24 hours, down from a high of almost two thousand deaths in Mid April. This was a significant drop in deaths with total US fatalities dropping to below a thousand.

This is a similar drop being recorded all over the world with record low levels being recorded in European hotspots of Italy, France, Spain, and United Kingdown with figures almost going to double digits. It is expected that the effects of the disease might not be felt in a few months.

However, as global figures decline, the same can not be said of Africa which has since a significant rise, blatant disobeying containment measures, and rise of unscientific measures to curb the disease. According to Africa CDC, the AU backed entity, there are 63,293 confirmed cases spread across the continent with 2,290 …

M-TIBA, the health financing technology platform based in Kenya and the Kenya Healthcare Federation (KHF) have announced a new SMS-based service to help the security agencies identify essential healthcare service workers in the country. This is in response to these workers facing travel restrictions during curfew hours and movements into or out of counties with restricted movements. Security personnel is also increasingly concerned about the authenticity of paper-based passes being used to identify essential service providers.

M-TIBA has developed a verification platform for security officers to check that people are healthcare workers providing essential services. They can do this by sending a free SMS with an ID number of the healthcare worker to 20253. They will receive a confirmation message from M-TIBA authenticating the ID – and vehicle registration details, when available.

This will help KHF members, who are providers of gazetted essential services, to carry on with their official …

The President of Tanzania, H.E. John Pombe Magufuli has raised a storm on the social media after questioning some of the tests conducted on Tanzanian patients, which he attributes to either poor workmanship in the National Referral Laboratory or faulty kits.

In a televised speech, the Tanzanian leader narrated how his security agents submitted different samples from domestic and wild animals as well as fruits and even natural oil, all disguised as human samples with queer results of goat, pawpaw and quail all returning positive for Covid-19.

Though this has become an online buzz, this has also raised critical questions on the validity of tests currently being used in Africa, mainly from China. There have been fears of the tests returning an invalid result painting a wrong picture of the pandemic.

African countries have been heavily relying on donated kits with Chinese billionaire Jack Ma sending in over one million …

The East African economies were looking forward to 2020 with a lot of optimism. While there were issues with inflation and money circulation in Kenya, projections still showed the country would comfortably manage a growth range of above 5 percent. All the other eastern African countries were projected to do even much better with Rwanda leading in terms of growth averaging 7 percent. Then, Coronavirus happened. This has reversed the projections with fear that the region with the highest growth rate in Africa will stagnate. This has already been felt with stock markets across the region registering massive capital loss and foreign investors shying away from the market. The region is also looking at ways of sustaining their economies amid lockdowns in Uganda and Rwanda, partial lockdown in Kenya and a non-restrained movement approach in Tanzania.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) latest World Economic Outlook projections for 2020 pegs Kenya …

At the height of Kenya’s former president Daniel arap Moi’s rule, an idea was conceived that Kenya would stop over-reliance on foreign imports especially motor vehicles and instead develop local capacity to the manufacturing of cars. In the idea, Moi set up Nyayo Motor Corporation, a state-backed entity that was granted the task of developing Kenya’s first made car. As fate would have it, the development of Nyayo Pioneer car flopped and the idea was abandoned.

A state-backed ego and poor planning, disregard of engineering, poor funding and poor workmanship are some of the reasons that are blamed for the collapse of President Moi’s pet project.  What has followed over the decades is a dramatic collapse of almost all industries in the country especially those that had state backing. These included the clothing and apparel industries, food and beverage processing companies, as well as engineering projects and left everything into …