Browsing: Coronavirus

This year’s progress has been threatened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has caused a global economic shock that has hit Africa at a time when the government’s policy space to respond to it is small to nonexistent.…

Stavros Nicolaou, a Senior Executive at Aspen Pharmacare Group said in the absence of orders or commitments, Aspen is considering the repurposing of two COVID-19 production lines for the manufacture of other products.

“The continent would lose its only existing COVID vaccine manufacturing capacity, It would be a massive setback for Africa’s plans to localize and reduce its dependency on imported vaccines,” he said.

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said global health security would be undermined if companies like Aspen were not backed.…

The tourism industry is unlikely to return to pre-COVID arrival levels until 2023 or later, following the ravaging effect of the coronavirus pandemic.

This is according to the United Nation’s World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) which reveals that nearly half of the experts interviewed see a return to 2019 levels in 2024 or later.

Quoting its World Investment Report 20201, UNWTO says the main barriers of full recovery are travel restrictions, slow containment of the virus, low traveler confidence and a poor economic environment.

Dubbed ‘COVID-19 and Tourism’, the report reveals that travel has adapted to the impact of COVID particularly in terms of travel restrictions.

“Domestic travel has increased, but this does little to help developing countries that are dependent on international travel. Retirees, who tend to spend more per trip, are more likely to stay at home,” the report says.

In Kenya for instance, domestic tourists cut their holiday …

A recent report showcasing how Covid-19 has affected travel with restrictions has shown that Kenya is the recent most banned nation across East Africa.

Kenyan’s are banned from travelling to at least 54 countries due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The East African nation is cited to be among countries due to be hit by the fourth wave of the highly contagious Covid-19 Delta variant virus. The country’s Health Ministry made the announcement recently urging its citizen to act with caution.

This fourth wave is said to be much more transmissible than the earlier two varieties. It was first identified in India but has now been reported present in western Kenya as well. From there, it is feared that infections may affect all of Kenya over the course of the next two months hence there is no surprise that increasingly more countries are barring Kenyans from entering their borders.

The estimate …

That year, in 2015, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania settled for a three-year plan to phase out the importation of used clothes, a major exporter been the United States. To realise the intended ban, taxes were increased on second-hand clothes were increased effectively deterring their importation. The plan was to completely ban the import of second-hand clothes as of 2019.

This ambitious vision was never realized as the Trump administration issued an ultimatum for EAC to rescind the ban on second-hand clothes by 23 February 2018 or, as the DW writer Isaac Mugabi puts it ‘face the consequences.’…

If death could be bribed, the rich men would never die, this old African saying has come to life as new light is shown on Ugandan doctors over charging Covid-19 patients for treatment. After all, once diagnosed, one is ready to pay any amount to rid themselves of the dreaded virus, so the doctors put two and two together and charge more.

Here is the shocking and even upsetting if not downright despicable testimonial of a patient who was been swindled after he was diagnosed positive of Covid-19. He speaks of what happens as he is admitted in to a private hospital in Uganda mid last month.

“After two days of admission, the hospital told me they needed me to advance some money, $750…I did not have it anyway…when discharging me, that’s when they gave me the full medical bill of $2,482.”

This is just one patient, but he represents …

Covid 19 wreaked havoc to the economy and no sector was worse hit than the tourism and hospitality sector. Air travel restrictions, mandatory quarantine of arrivals and the shutting of businesses in the tourism and hospitality sectors along with crumple of demand have led to an unprecedented shock.

So bad was the situation that last year, tourism operators in Tanzania forecast revenue contractions of 80% or more while the World Bank’s 14th Tanzania Economic Update (TEU) showed that Tanzania’s economic growth slowed down to 2.5% from the 6.9% growth reported the previous year. (santacruzcore.com)

But there is light at the end of the tunnel, with eased travel restrictions, Tanzania is witnessing a revamp in both the tourism and hospitality sectors. Global top brands like Onomo Hotels have opened shop in the commercial capitol Dar es Salaam.

Meet ONOMO General Manager Mark Soderlund as he gives us an inside …

“The change of tone ushered in by President Samia Suluhu Hassan over the last month could indicate a welcome to a whole new economic direction in Tanzania’,” remarked Peter Leon, Partner and Africa Co-Chair, Herbert Smith Freehills

Investors have been wary of dipping their feet in Tanzania’s investment pool, more so investors in the extractive industries. In March 2017, a total ban on the export of unprocessed mineral concentrates and ores was instated.

Just four months later, in July 2017, after six days of deliberation, three new laws assented. The new laws gave significant power to the government, empowering it to control the extractives sector autonomously.

The three laws that were altered are:

• The Natural Wealth and Resources Contracts (Review and Renegotiation of Unconscionable Terms) Act, 2017 (Unconscionable Terms Act);
• The Natural Wealth and Resources (Permanent Sovereignty) Act, 2017 (Permanent Sovereignty Act); and
• The Written Laws(Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, 2017 which

 Economic prospects are predicting that 2021 will be a happier year for Pension Schemes. The devasting impact of Covid-19 had far reaching implications on the pension sector, especially in 2020 caused by several factors.

Also Read: Covid Economics: Kenya’s navigation of debt relief

• We had massive payouts, especially in the hospitality sector as companies closed down and retrenched. Pension scheme members made early access to pension benefits to cushion their financial well-being.
• A number of employers could not afford contributions funding to pension scheme and So they adapted to this challenge by obtaining a reprieve from the Retirement Benefits Authority to have temporal suspension of contributions deduction and remittance.
• The stock market also had a significant dip in valuations occasioned decline in earnings from a number of counters especially banking sector.
• In 2020 the GDP growth dropped to 1% growth compared to the projected growth of about 5%.

Despite the …