Browsing: East Africa

Most Kenyans, 83 per cent, indicated a willingness to increase the amount of money they allocate to savings and investments, but the inability to save due to insufficient funds after fulfilling their obligations that require regular funding and the availability of quick digital loans.

Among their obligations which contribute to Kenyans’ financial strain is supporting their extended family which considerably bites into their savings. 84 per cent of people indicated that they regularly provide some income to their extended family, mostly in case of emergencies, because they feel a sense of obligation to send their extended families money and because their extended family members treat them better when they are sent money.

On their part, the extended family members mostly use the money to cater to recurring expenses like food & transport, school fees and medical expenses at 23 per cent, 19 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. Farm-related …

• Tanzania’s Government is scheduled to open the 2022 Tanzania Energy Congress (TEC) this August in the country’s commercial port city of Dar es Salaam
• TEC will highlight the plans and priorities of the Ministry of Energy with regard to the next strategic steps in both the energy and hydrocarbons sectors in Tanzania
• This annual event premiered four years ago under the steward strategic partnership of Ocean Business Partners Tanzania

Tanzania’s Government is scheduled to open the 2022 Tanzania Energy Congress (TEC) this August in the country’s commercial port city of Dar es Salaam.

Hosted under the flagship of the Energy Ministry, under the patronage of His Excellency January Makamba, Minister for Energy, TEC will highlight the plans and priorities of the Ministry of Energy with regard to the next strategic steps in both the energy and hydrocarbons sectors in Tanzania.

The two-day conference (3 – 4 August 2022) will feature …

Cases so far have “mainly but not exclusively been identified amongst men who have sex with men,” according to WHO. This new revelation is against known medical knowledge of the disease because the WHO considers monkeypox not to be a sexually transmitted infection.

In a recent media briefing, Dr John Brooks, an epidemiologist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, explained that “…monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted infection in the typical sense, but it can be transmitted during sexual and intimate contact.”

From there onwards, the disease has continued to spread, as of May 21st the WHO has reported some 92 confirmed cases and 28 suspected ones. In the wake of this outbreak in the UK, other cases have been reported in Spain and Portugal and several other European countries.…

With numerous international companies and organizations operating in Tanzania’s rural areas, input by this sector has huge direct impact on the related communities.

Support ranges from digging of wells to funding irrigation and smart agriculture projects. There is also the matter of lack of adequate financing and poor sanitation all of which gravely hold back social and economic growth across the country.

Also, as the minister pointed out, through CSR, companies have the opportunity to help the government increase water supply by digging wells for rural communities and by protecting water catchment areas in places they operate.…

Unfortunately, even with an increased power supply, electricity is mostly used for lighting but the vast part of the community still relies on biomass ‘…which makes up close to 90% of the total primary energy consumption in Tanzania.’

According to REA, this reliance on biomass leads to the deforestation of 100,000 hectares every year and only about a quarter of this is ever reforested. At the moment, at least 63.5% of the households in Tanzania Mainland use firewood as the main source of energy for cooking which is the main cause of deforestation along with the clearing of forests for cultivation.

Another 26.2% of Tanzanians rely on charcoal for cooking and another 5.1% use, liquified petroleum gas and a mere 3 per cent use electricity. These figures show that even though there is an increased supply of electricity there is still profound destruction of forests and the atmosphere through deforestation …

A road here and a railway there can never equate to bloodshed, torture endured, families separated, a history lost, a culture destroyed, a people lost. Because of colonisation modern-day Africans no longer know who they are or what their heritage is. 

They look up to the Caucasians as the embodiment of beauty, progress, of reason, none the wiser that it is their forefathers in Puntland and Ohir, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, that brought civilization to the world.

2022 Africa Day must be about recognition of Africa, re-branding Africa and re-establishing Africa’s position in the global socio-economic and political arena. On this Africa Day we must not only ask what is Africa but who is Africa. …

With the recent addition of the DRC to the East African region, landlocked countries have found an alternative port of entry in the Atlantic Ocean. The swiftness of trade with two ports of entry and the region’s strategic location will be incomparable to any other region on the continent.

The East African Federation would be the fourth largest country in both population and landmass, trailing after China, India and the United States. President Uhuru Kenyatta says that the federation would have over 300 million people.

The gross domestic product for the region will sum up to US$250 billion, the fourth-largest in Africa and the 34th biggest globally. Since the beginning of the last decade, East Africa has had the fastest growing economy globally. In 2019, the region’s economy grew by about 5 per cent. If the federation continues with this growth rate, the new country would quickly become the biggest …

World Bank further notes that the unified digitisation of the East African economy is estimated to generate up to a US$2.6 billion boost in GDP and 4.5 million new jobs that will largely benefit those at the bottom of the pyramid.

Data by GSMA reveals that by the end of 2020, 495 million people subscribed to mobile services in Sub-Saharan Africa, representing 46 percent of the region’s population, an increase of almost 20 million on 2019.

GSMA revealed that smartphone connections will more than double by 2025 in Sub-Saharan Africa with the East African Community registering the largest incremental growth, led by Rwanda and Tanzania. …