Browsing: Africa

Phase one of Tanzania’s Stand Gauge Railway (SGR) that extends from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro is almost complete.

The railway which covers over 300 kilometres is almost complete and the country is now getting ready to buy the trains that will run on the track.

Even though its first phase is not entirely complete due to the ongoing heavy rains that have stalled construction work, the country is ready to move on and buy and test the trains.

Unofficial reports say the government of Tanzania has started bidding for trains and is actually in the process of finalising procurement of at least two locomotives already. That’s not all, the required trains should have at least eight compartments for passengers and same number of wagons for cargo transportation.

Already the testing of trains has started, a senior official of the Tanzania Railway Corporation (TRC) intimated. It is expected that the …

The Tanzania Horticultural Association (Taha), is reporting an increase in revenue from the export of avocados which until now were not considered key export cash crop.

However growing demand in the US and Europe has seen the sub-sector increase revenue to USD 23 million annually.

Tanzania is the second largest producer of avocado fruit in Africa second only to Kenya. Over the past 5 years, avocado exports have frog leaped from 1,877 tonnes in 2014 to 9,000 tonnes in 2019 and were it not for the COVID-19 outbreak, this figure was expected to go only higher.

Kenya is already doing much better with its estimated annual output is about 190,000 tonnes every year as the country exports an average of 10,000 metric tonnes annually.

In Tanzania, there are about 10000 farmers of the crop who are spread out across the country and of these, now most have turned to the …

An IMF projection for this year shows that growth in oil exporters will decline from 1.8 per cent in 2019 to −2.8 per cent.…

China has been funding a lot of Africa’s development especially in the past two decades and in that time, Beijing has loaned to Africa a whopping USD160 billion.

This debt burden is here to stay, and to stay for a long time, that is unless China is willing to forego or at least ease the terms of the loans.  To put it in the words of the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo;

“It is something that the African countries should consider, too, in asking China to possibly enter debt relief on some deals that have incredibly onerous terms that will impact the African people for an awfully long time, if relief is not granted.”

This should not be a problem for the runner’s up for World’s biggest economy, in fact China is among the world’s richest 20 countries which are known as the Great 20 or more …

The Impact of COVID-19 on agriculture value chains especially transportation logistics is immense. Economies must adopt, industries and sectors must find their own solutions to the bottlenecks in the agri-food supply chain.

Now that it is no longer business as usual, what makes up for robust food supply chains when borders are shut down? Will air travel cut prizes and yet break even in cross border food supply routes? What technological advances must we embrace in food production to bridge the growing supply gap? How can digital systems help speed up logistics integration in the transportation sector?

These are the questions that must be answered to charter the way forward for Africa’s food security and maybe even the World’s.

https://theexchange.africa/industry-and-trade/agribusiness/how-africas-122-million-mobile-banking-accounts-can-fund-agriculture/

While the COVID-19 crisis has brought to our door steps the largest challenge for food security of modern times; with lock downs, quarantines and logistics disruptions not to mention the …

No continent suffers worse food security issues than Africa, yet despite the high productivity coupled with disease and drought resistant capabilities of genetic modified organisms (GMOs), Africa has long been resistant to genetically modified food, be they crop or animal embryos.

While the average beef cattle in Africa, say the local Zebu weighs an average weight of a mere 250kg market weight, hybrid beef cattle like the Aryshire, weighs an average of 400kg, almost double the local African breed.

Instead of settling for 1 to 3 litres of milk per day from your local Zebu, you could get in excess of 10 litres of milk everyday from a hybrid Fresian, almost four times more milk.

Not only does the Aryshire beef bull and the Fresian cow produce more, they grow faster and when crossbred, they are even resistant to disease and bad weather. So why would food troubled Africa resist …

While all other agricultural exports are suffering reduced demand owing to the Covid-19 global pandemic, that is not the case for tobacco which has recorded remarkable increase in sales at the beginning of the marketing season.

Reports from Zimbabwe say export of flue-cured tobacco is stable and prices are firm, with tobacco sales having increased more than quadrupled over the cause of the last and the present season. Last season closed with sales of USD232 008 but this season has opened with sales of USD1 598 230 that is a 588 percent increase!

As market season opened at the start of the month, an impressive USD1.6 million was sold. With attractive prices that begun above USD 5 per kilogramme, farmers were more than willing to sell. Only three days after the marketing season opened, farmers had sold almost 700 000 kilogrammes of tobacco.

The country’s Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board …

Total Uganda has bought out the financial struggling Tullow Oil for a whopping USD575 million as the latter gears up to leave the East African market.

The buyout will be paid in part by a USD 500 million initial payment payable upon completion and another USD75 million payable when the project pact is finalized.

With completion of the sell, Total Uganda will now own Tullow’s assets on the humongous Lake Albert Development project and the even larger East African Crude Oil Pipeline project. Tullow, a British owned conglomerate has been struggling and the just inked Uganda buy out will help improve its liquidity.

The move is not due to the ongoing global coronivrus pandemic, it is rather a strategic plan that was on the table long before the pandemic begun. At the start of the year, the sale and purchase agreement had already been signed, well before the Covi-19 virus …

The African Development Bank Group has got a new member, Ireland, bringing its total number of international members to 27. Ireland’s membership goes along way to boosting the banks financial muscle and with it, the ability to fund development projects across the continent.

Ireland officially joined the Group last month after a declaration of its membership was issued in late April, a little less than an year after the country submitted its application to join the Group mid last year.

Following the declaration, Ireland’s top ranking government official the Minister for Finance Mr. Paschal Donohoe explained that its membership will serve to create investment opportunities for Irish businesses.

Short of detailing what business sectors will be targeted, the minister said the membership will help to advance shared development priorities, a view shared by the Bank’s President, Mr. Akinwumi Adesina,

The Bank’s president maintained that joining of its newest international member …

The globe is at a stand-still position and Africa is hurting and expected to also sustain serious repercussions from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has already claimed nearly 2,000 lives, infected over 60,000 people and around 21,000 managed to recover According to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa.

The pandemic has brought rather crucial ideas from South Africa’s President and African Union chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa on Africa requesting a two-year debt standstill to provide governments with the fiscal space to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

As the world strives to attain a balance between staying safe and breathing life back to the economy, Africa is taking the entire perspective of the pandemic on its axis, while other nations move around several measures, some African nations have managed to somewhat contain the virus to a certain extent.

The