Browsing: Kenya

KCB Group is seeking to deepen its new women proposition, committing billions of shillings towards funding women owned and women run enterprises.

According to the bank, the drive is meant to strengthen its diversity and inclusivity focus as part of its sustainability agenda by simplifying financial inclusion for women.

The programme dubbed ‘Women Value Proposition’ has seen the bank disburse loans worth Ksh7.1 billion (US$68.9 million) to 1,400 women to date, KCB said in its current Sustainability Report.

It is aimed at increasing credit facilities to women alongside, providing them with technical and non- financial support.

READ ALSO:KCB commits Ksh10 million for Afro-Asia Fintech Summit

The initiative is in line with KCB Sustainability 10-point action plan on diversity and inclusion. This pillar aims to incorporate gender diversity as part of its strategic initiative to ensure that we encourage more women to take up key roles in business ventures.

“KCB …

A report released at the African Green Revolution Forum in Accra finds that millions of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rarely are dependent on big multinationals for their raw materials but directly rely upon millions more smallholder farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The report finds that, overall, only about 20 percent of the volume of food consumed in Africa fits the conventional notion of subsistence agriculture—food consumed directly by the farming households that grow it.

“All this represents a profound turnaround from mere decades ago, ” said Dr. Thomas Reardon of Michigan State University, a lead author of the report. “There has been a ‘Quiet Revolution’ in agrifood private sector value chains linking small farmers to burgeoning urban markets and growing towns in Africa. This has spurred farmers’ participation in food and farm input markets.”

SMEs provide a range of services, from transport and logistics to the sale of inputs such …

Sub-Saharan African clothing and footwear market is worth $31 billion US dollars and growing. In a series of articles about the industry in Sub Sahara Africa, we will explore the policies, trade and the budding creative fashion industry in the region. This is the second part of the series where we focus on the raw material for the textile industry.

Read the previous series:  Africa Fashionomics: Making sense of the $31 Billion industry

Also:  Africa Fashionomics: Not enough materials to support a budding textile industry

And also: Africa Fashionomics: Business of Fashion in Africa led by Ethiopia

East African Community had one ambitious goal; to get rid of second-hand clothes in the region and shield their nascent textile industry from adverse effects of these clothes from U.S and Europe. The goal was already set and the countries would effect a hike on the duty charged on second-hand clothes. East African …

Kountable, a global trade and technology platform, has formed strategic partnerships with customs agencies in both Rwanda and Kenya.

This provides Kountable with a dedicated group of customs experts to assist in the timely processing and payment for imported goods in the region in addition to providing last-mile logistics so that goods can remain insured in that final stretch of the trade.

“The more parties we have who validate and participate in a transaction,” said Kountable CEO Chris Hale, “the more trust and transparency we bring to the network. We have gone through an extensive process to select these partners based on their professionalism and strength of their experience.”

Selected by an in-depth interview process and the recommendations of the Rwanda Revenue Authority’s (RRA’s) Risk Management Office and the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA’s) Commissioner, Customs and Excise Services Department, these custom agencies are certified, vetted and found to be …

Hawassa Industrial park sits 140 miles south of Addis Ababa. The park was built by China Civil Engineering Corporation in 2016 and has so far attracted several international companies. The park is part of a long-term vision to grow Ethiopia into a production hub. It houses factories including textile and agro-processing and has 25,000 employees producing garments.

In the last 5 to 6 years, the textile, and apparel industry have grown at an average of 51% and more than 65 international textile investment projects have been licensed for foreign investors, during this period.

According to the World Investment Report, Ethiopia is one of the top-performing African countries in FDI flow, especially in the textile sector. The government of Ethiopia believes that textile would help the nation to join middle-income status in 2025. As the way forward, the Ethiopian government has been building industrial parks at different cities of the country …

In March last year, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) published regulations for the commercial use of drones.

KCAA Director General Gilbert Kibe said that any operator of the unmanned aerial vehicles were expected to register them before use.

Drone importation and licensing in Kenya

In a move seen as a limitation to the country’s nascent film industry, Kibe said that even those who owned drones before the laws were passed were supposed to register them within six months.

“A person commits an offense if they own, operate, import, manufacture, assemble or test an RPAS without authorisation from KCAA,” he said.

The contention came due to the fees imposed by KCAA.

While drones are permitted for recreational use in Kenya, anyone wishing to operate one has to part with anything between Kshs 60,000 (USD 600) and Kshs 232,000 (USD 2,300) depending on the purpose of use.

Kibe said, “Any Person …

Longhorn Publishers PLC, the Kenyan book publishers with strong presence in East and Central Africa has announced its financial results, with group profit after tax for the year ended 30 June 2019 rising by 1%, to Kshs 185 million, from Kshs 183 million in 2018.

The Company attributes this performance to commendable growth in Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, as well as the positive response to the rollout of Kenya’s new competency-based curriculum (CBC), in which Longhorn has played a significant role in its implementation by having distributed 2 million textbooks to 23,000 public primary schools in Kenya.

Mr. Maxwell Wahome, the Group Managing Director of Longhorn Publishers, said,  “The strategic focus on regional expansion has begun to bear fruit, with our investment in market-specific content, particularly for Uganda and Tanzania, realising a 41% revenue growth in these markets.  In an increasingly digital world, we need to ensure all our children …

Kenya’s HF Group Plc has expressed optimism of returning to profitability by the end of this financial year after registering significant performance improvement, cutting its losses by more than half a billion shillings.

The mortgage lender recorded a half-year pre-tax loss of Ksh94.314 million, compared to a loss of Ksh642.74 million for the year ended 31 December 2018. 

The Group’s total interest expenses reduced by 9.80 per cent to Ksh1.67 billion from Ksh85 billion during a similar period in 2018, on the back of an aggressive retail banking strategy that has seen the business lower the cost of funding.

During the period, the Group’s property development subsidiary, HFDI, managed to offset outstanding debt worth Kes. 1.5 billion.

Non-funded income grew by 56 per cent to Ksh914 million up from Ksh586 million during a similar period in 2018, on account of gains made on sale of assets.

 Managing Non-Performing Loans

The Aga Khan University in Nairobi is positioning itself as a leading trainer of journalists and media professionals in East Africa and beyond through its Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC). The university which has so far established a formidable partnership with foreign institutions of higher learning is quickly earning the hearts of media professionals in the region.

During the ongoing, The East African Communication Association (EACA) Conference, media trainers and scholars drawn from the region have heaped praises on the institution based on the unique approaches it is employing in raising the standards of media training in the region.

The conference themed, ‘Embracing Innovation, Surviving Disruption: New Frontiers for Journalism and Communication’ aims at offering solutions to the challenges that the media sector is currently facing and will interrogate how new technological trends are transforming the sector in East Africa.

Dr. Alex Awiti, Interim Dean at GSMC …

The Nairobi Securities Exchange(NSE) has recorded an 82 per sent drop in half year profit to June 30, the self listed firm has reported.

The group’s profit during the period Ksh24 million as compared to Ksh134 million recorded over the same period in 2018.

This was occasioned by an 18 per cent decrease in revenues mainly driven by a 28 per cent drop in equity turnover which declined from Ksh108.5 billion for the six months ended 30 June 2018 to Ksh78.1 billion for the six months ended 30 June 2019.

READ:Bear run continues at NSE with drop in key index

This in turn led to a reduction in equity trading levies by 28 per cent from Ksh259.9 million for the six months ended 30 June 2018 to Ksh187.5 million for the six months ended 30 June 2019.

“The decline in the equity turnover was as a result of low …