Author: Martin Mwita

Cellulant’s Agrikore platform – an online marketplace for smallholder farmers, agricultural input and produce traders is tapping into Africa’s emerging Agritech market valued at €5.3 billion (US$5.9 billion) according to a new report by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and Dalberg Advisors.

This comes as 94 per cent of the continent’s emerging Agritech market remains untapped, according to the survey.

The State of Digitalisation of Agriculture in Africa 2019 report identifies online marketplace solutions such as Agrikore as significant use cases of how digital tools are being built to tackle major challenges of attracting and retaining a significant number of buyers and sellers, and in thus doing, help to solve the problem of inefficient and fragmented agricultural markets.

READ ALSO:Kenyan fintech Cellulant sells $47.5M stake to American investors

The Agriculture market in Africa is projected to grow to US$1trillion by 2030. It continues to be …

Kenya’s Equity Bank has been named as the most ‘Socially Responsible Bank in Africa’ at the most prestigious Africa’s banking and financial sector event – The African Banker Awards 2019.

This affirms Equity’s social and environmental leadership on the continent.

The award recognises Equity’s initiatives steered through the Equity Group Foundation (EGF) programmes that are positively impacting communities.

READ ALSO:Renewable energy attracts IFC loan for Equity Bank

The programmes are across five thematic areas that include education and leadership development, entrepreneurship and financial education, health, agriculture and agribusiness, and energy and environment.

The efforts they are geared towards, go beyond the philanthropic use of funds to use of overall knowledge, resources and reputation to improve livelihoods.

Through EGF, the bank has had successful initiatives, key among them being the improvement of secondary school education access for 16,168 students under the Wings to Fly program; Financial Literacy training that …

KCB Bank Kenya has committed Ksh10 million (US$97,448) to the Afro-Asia Fintech Festival 2019, a first of its kind in the region which will be held next week.

The funds will go into supporting the mega financial technology (Fintech) summit being hosted by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

The forum will take place between July 15–16 and is themed, ‘Fintech in Savannah’, modeled along the Singapore Fintech Festival.

KCB backing is informed by the need for Kenya to continue driving innovations in the banking sector to boost financial inclusion, the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) listed lender has noted.

Speaking during the cheque handover to the CBK, KCB Group Chief Operating Officer Samuel Makome said: “For the past five years, we have made significant investments in financial technology in the realization that the future of banking is in digital finance. We will therefore remain …

The Kenyan government, through the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, has announced it will set aside over 750 acres of land within Mount Kenya forest aide in the conservation of the critically endangered Mountain Bongo.

According to Tourism and Wildlife Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala, the land will help protect the Mountain Bongo, whose numbers have dropped to below 100 animals in the wild.

With fewer than 100 Bongos left in the Wild, the Mountain Bongo has been classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as a critically endangered species.

READ ALSO:Kenyan Retail Complex, The Hub, seeks to save endangered African species

“The land set aside by the Kenya Forest Service will enable us to increase the number of Mountain Bongos to a sustainable population. We currently have 96 Mountain Bongos in the wild and 77 in captivity being used for breeding by the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy,” …

Kenya is going big on tapping the billions in the blue economy if the latest developments by government, in partnership with the private sector, are anything to go by.

In a spirited move to exploit the country’s maritime sector and the global ocean waters, the government has entered into a partnership with global logistics firm―Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), to revive the defunct Kenya National Shipping Line (KNSL).

This is a bold move being taken by the government noting that KNSL has been dormant for close to 22 years, after poor management sent it into debt and loss of business.

Its collapse saw the country miss out on an untapped Ksh304 billion (US$2.9billion) business potential, an amount Kenyan importers spend on freight charges paid to foreign firms.

The national shipping line was established in 1987 as the national carrier to handle containerized exports and imports freight cargo, to and from the …

Most entrepreneurs have not prepared a business succession plan for their businesses in case of their departure, industry players have noted, which has led to the collapse of many Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in the demise or the absence of the business owner.

In most cases, it is the owner who carries the vision of the business and ensures that the business remains afloat.

Additionally, most SME’s do not have comprehensive risk and asset management solutions, which leaves them greatly exposed to manageable risks and therefore stand a very slim chance of recovering their business in case of an event.

This was reported during an Invest In Africa-Kenya and Liberty Life Insurance forum in Nairobi this week, attended by over 60 SMEs.

The forum was convened to discuss business sustainability beyond the owner under the theme: “Beyond the Business: Is there tomorrow for your company?”

Speaking at the event, …

Swiss International Hotels & Resorts has signed a management contract with FEP Holdings Limited to operate its property in Sagana, Kenya, which will be named Swiss International Sagana Resort & Conference Centre.

The hotel is nearing its construction completion and is scheduled to open before the end of 2019. It is expected to create 150 direct jobs to Kenyans which in turn will benefit over 1,000 households.

READ ALSO:Swiss International Resort Mount Kenya gains global acclaim

Strategically located along the Nairobi-Nyeri Highway, the resort is expected to boost both leisure and conference tourism in the Mount Kenya circuit and the Kenyan tourism industry at large.

FEP Holdings started construction of the property in 2014 and put out an international tender in December 2018, to get the right partner to run the four star resort.

The Swiss international hospitality group is expected to run the facility on international standards with …

Barely a month after intercepting a consignment of contrabands and illegal imports at the Port of Mombasa, Kenyan authorities have yet again seized another multi-million shipment by rogue importers in Kenya.

Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) seized 144 drums of imported Ethanol at the Port of Mombasa, which had been mis-declared as 1,000 bags of cement.

Customs officers have also seized another high end motor-vehicle, a Range Rover Sports suspected to have been stolen from the United Kingdom which had been mis-declared as second hand window frames, doors, folding chairs, stools and wall pictures.

READ ALSO:KRA intercepts narcotics disguised as candy at JKIA

The Ethanol was imported in two by twenty feet containers while the vehicle was in a twenty-foot container. The two were intercepted following intelligence reports; they were scanned through KRA’s non-intrusive scanners and the images showed inconsistency with what had been manifested.

A multi-agency team lead by …

KCB Bank Kenya has launched a Ksh300 million (US$2.9 million) poultry farmer empowerment project in Makueni County, in its latest move to support agribusiness in Kenya.

This will see over 1,000 poultry farmers in Kibwezi benefit from credit facilities, capital, vaccinated insured chicks, chicken feed and vaccines.

The project will be offered under KCB MobiGrow, a mobile-based platform which provides financial and non-financial services to smallholder farmers in Kenya and Rwanda.

Under the project dubbed, ‘From Chick to Market’, poultry farmers will access various tailor-made MobiGrow services.

Upon maturity, the chicken will be bought at a pre-contracted price by KCB market partners, guaranteeing farmers of a ready market.

Proceeds from the sales will then be remitted to farmers through their KCB MobiGrow accounts to ensure the recovery of loan amounts.

“We are committed to growing agribusiness in the country. We continue to accelerate access to financial services which is in …

The Kenyan business community is now hopeful Tanzania will uphold its commitment of opening up its borders for trade under the Single Customs Territory (SCT), after President Uhuru Kenyatta’s visit to Tanzania this weekend.

The diplomatic and trade relations of the two countries had last week plummeted following remarks by a Nairobi politician, which indicated foreigners would be thrown out.

Emotions ran high among legislators of the two countries, after Kenyan-Starehe MP Charles Njagua’s remarks on foreigners.

The legislator on June 26, turned the heat on foreign traders accusing them of taking over key city markets, while they harassed. He threatened to flash out foreigners and have them deported.

Njagua’s sentiments were not well received in Tanzania where a heated debate ensued in Parliament, with legislators threatening a diplomatic action against Kenya.

READ ALSO:Tanzania’s ‘jilted lover’ attitude hinders uniting East Africa

Tanzania’s opposition leader Freeman Mbowe said though Hon.Njagua …