Browsing: Department for International Development (DFID)

A shot in the arm for African scientists as $72M program kicks-off

The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is announcing the second round of calls for a multi-million-dollar research programme led and implemented by African scientists, working collaboratively to address challenges faced by people in African countries.

A total $72M has been invested into the second phase of the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science in Africa (DELTAS Africa) programme, a flagship programme of the AAS.

A similar investment was made in the first phase of the programme was implemented with the support of Wellcome and the Department for International Development (DFID). AAS is announcing a second call with support from Wellcome with additional funding to be announced in the future. This second phase will run from 2021 to 2025.

This follows a successful first five-year programme with the second round extending its remit to new priority research areas including non-communicable diseases, public health research, social sciences and humanities, implementation science …

Rwanda leads East Africa Community member countries on the ease of doing business, the latest World Bank ‘Doing Business 2020’ shows. Kenya comes in second in the region and 56th globally.

Rwanda has maintained its position as the leading country in East Africa on the ease of doing business, the latest World Bank ‘Doing Business 2020’ shows.

This is despite dropping nine places to 38 globally from 29 last year.

READ  ALSO:How Rwanda has strategically positioned itself as an investment hub

Kenya comes in second in the region and 56th globally, having improved five places from position 61 last year.

READ:Kenya ranks 61 from 80 in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business

Uganda and Tanzania come a distant 116 and 141 globally respectively while DR Congo and South Sudan are near the bottom ranking 183 and 185 respectively, out of the total 190 in the index. This places them third fourth fifth and sixth respectively in the region.

Indicators that make Rwanda top include starting a business which has been made easy by exempting newly formed small and …

How Aga Khan and UK are building renewable energy in East and Central Africa

UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) run and managed CDC, the mission is to support the building of businesses throughout Africa and South Asia, to create jobs, and to make a lasting difference to people’s lives in some of the world’s poorest places.

The public limited company has been working with various entities in the continent to develop structures for harnessing renewable energy in East Africa. This has been necessitated by the rising energy needs in the region as well as need for cleaner green energy worldwide.

In 2017, CDC invested in a joint venture alongside the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) and Industrial Promotion Services (IPS) to develop and finance power projects in sub-Saharan Africa, mobilizing project funding of over US$ 1billion.

The platform’s flagship development project is the creation of the 147 MW Ruzizi III hydropower project to be located in the Great Lakes region (Rwanda, …