Browsing: Rwanda

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is currently causing a significant adverse impact on the global economy occasioned by countries imposing measures to mitigate increasing cases and also sanctioning countries with more cases.

Governments around the world are implementing various fiscal measures to mitigate the adverse effect and provide relief for businesses and households. Across the Eastern African region, the impacts of COVID-19 are being felt in different ways and the measures taken by the respective governments have also differed on the areas of focus and comprehensiveness.

The third wave of coronavirus in Kenya saw President Uhuru Kenyatta issued a couple of measures restricting movement by locking the Capital city Nairobi and Neighboring counties as a one zoned area.

Also Read: Tanzanian Ambassadors Urged to Explore Markets for Tanzanian Products

Kenya’s decision to halt the movement of interstate buses across its border following a surge in Covid-19 cases has left many business …

Beans are one of the most important crops in Rwanda with approximately 62 percent of One Acre Fund farmers growing climbing beans in 2014, and 49 percent grew bush beans, with a total average of 0.1 hectares under beans for those who cultivated.

In Rwanda, smallholder farmers are testing ways to transition from subsistence-oriented approaches to more market-based production. A pilot has demonstrated potential to significantly increase their production, as well as profits.

Presently beans, With a per capita consumption of more than 150g per person per day, beans are the most consumed and important source of protein and essential micro-nutrients in Rwanda.

With Rwanda’s Eastern Province prone to climate risks for bean production due to long dry spells, increasing temperatures, and erratic rainfall that lead to frequent crop failure and food shortages, the

Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT, in collaboration with Global Affairs Canada, has been at …

One of the leading agribusiness platform in Africa is determined to transform Agriculture in Africa.

The agribusiness platform dubbed JR Farms Limited is looking to achieve this by undertaking opportunities for growth and business that will engender sustainable food production and increased incomes for farmers in Africa. JR Farms is a Rwandan led agri-enterprise operating in Rwanda, Nigeria and Zambia in the areas of food processing and retailing, agro commodity trading and consulting. Its corporate goals are to ensure food security, end hunger in Africa and create decent jobs for Africa’s women and young people.

Also Read: Rwanda well placed for trading under the AfCFTA

In a bid to ensure that this is achieved, the firm has partnered with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to develop youth-led agriculture enterprises.

The two organisations have signed an agreement to promote youth involvement in agriculture and create decent work opportunities.

FAO and JR …

In its fight against Covid-19 Rwanda has opted to have robots replace humans when coming into contact with infected persons.

With the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Rwanda is to deploy its second set of three ‘THOR UVC’ robots.

What are these avenger bots all about? As its name suggests, the THOR ultra-violet (UVC) uses UVC to disinfect. Using room mapping technology, THOR UVC is able to go around a given cleaning space and disinfect it efficiently.

It uses UVC energy to kill germs and pathogens that way, the robots minimize contact of persons with the pathogens.  So the deployment of the THOR UVC robots will help clean and disinfect Covid-19 risk areas like hospitals.

The robots will also serve to disinfect areas of mass gathering like border areas and market places as well as office spaces.

This second dispatch of robots was handed over on …

Rwanda has become a role model for other African countries…

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus governance on the African continent. The response from one country to another has differed and those that have fared well are those with strong discipline and efficient systems of governance. They are also countries where governments enjoy a high degree of trust from their citizens.

Here are six key lessons that need to be highlighted that might serve as a blueprint on how to govern better in Africa.

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments”.

The first lesson to be drawn is that you need leaders who are disciplined and can run government business with a certain degree of strictness. There are many on the continent who want to do the right thing but who lack discipline and are pulled in different directions. Just like the rest of the world, Rwanda imposed a lockdown in March 2020. It was among the …

East African countries have had a tough balancing act in 2020 as the Covid-19 situation oscillated from good to bad over and over again. This is reminiscent of the global situation where central banks have been forced to use high-level tuning and juggling to ensure their currencies don’t fall beyond repair. Even the US dollar, the main international currency has suffered repeatedly with Chinese Yuan and Euro pushing it against the wall. 

In East Africa, a tough monetary policy by the central banks has seen currencies remain stable though with significant losses. Kenya for example, has seen its shilling lose ground to the dollar by almost seven points. The Rwandan franc and Tanzanian shilling have survived the wave while the South Sudan pound has been hit hard. 

The East African region is primarily a traditional shilling zone that was introduced by the British rulers and used in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, …

The Intra African Trade Fair (IATF2021) is expected to be a grand event that comes in the backdrop of very optimistic forecasts for the automobile industry in Africa.

To be held next year in Kigali, Rwanda, from 6 – 12 September 2021, the IATF 2021 is a major trade event, that serves to boost sells of vehicles and related parts across the continent. The event will provide a unique and valuable platform for businesses to explore a single integrated African market of over 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of over US$2.5 trillion.

Thanks to increased regional value chains, Afreximbank is of the view that new vehicle sales increase from 1 million to 5 million units a year across Africa.

A senior trade facilitator Gainmore Zanamwe told an online seminar that the sector prospects are brigh and described the Automotive Tradeshow is a critical base from which to …

The East African region is a vast region with massive resources, population, and an established commercial landscape that presents viable business opportunities for external investors. According to statistics both by the World Bank and IMF, the region was one of the fastest-growing in Africa with a high influx of foreign direct investments.

In the 2019 report, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted that the East African region including Ethiopia received $9 Billion in foreign direct investment with projections of this figure doubling over time. However, the effects of the Covid-19 has had a great effect both on the economic growth as well as the number of foreign investments into the region.

The African Development Bank, in its analysis of the effects of Covid-19, highlighted the rebound of the East African economy as one of the main points of observation of the continent’s resilience. GDP growth for 2020 …

Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania have joined forces to connect stock markets electronically.

The project which is funded by world bank means that the three countries will operate a single market with a view of reducing the cost and time of trading in shares of companies listed on markets across the borders.

The three states are to start trading before the end of this year after interconnecting their trading systems and hooking it to the EAC Capital Markets Infrastructure (CMI) Information Technology platform.

With this new singe stock market, investors in the three states will buy and sell shares of companies listed in any of the countries without going through different stockbrokers.

Taking 3.28 per cent of the value of the transactions, Ugandan stockbrokers take the largest share of the stock trading commission not only within East Africa but in the entire African continent.

Brokerage commission on equity trading in Rwanda …