Browsing: South Africa

SEACOM a submarine cable that connects South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Djibouti, France and India is expanding to bring its software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) services to Kenyan businesses with reduced connectivity costs, increased security, agility, and local support to customers.

SEACOM’s experience with ICT infrastructure in Africa has been extensive having launched Africa’s first broadband submarine cable system in 2009 and provides continent-wide secure Internet. It also offers a full suite of communications and cloud solutions that enable the growth of Africa’s digital economy. Their new SD-WAN services are now available to Kenyan businesses.

SD-WAN solves modern network problems for businesses

The addition of managed SD-WAN to SEACOM’s services is great news for Kenyan businesses. With the increased global adoption of cloud applications, mobile workforces, and voice and video communications becoming the new norm, traditional networks have been placed under significant pressure to meet increasing demands. Using a legacy …

As Agricultural activities intensifies to provide sufficient food for a growing population in south Africa climate change and its manifestations, which includes extreme weather events, have been featured as prominent risks on the radar of investors, banks and commercial farmers bearing in mind that South Africa has a market-oriented agricultural economy that is highly diversified and includes the production of all the major grains (except rice), oilseeds, deciduous and subtropical fruits, sugar, citrus, wine and most vegetables.

In Illustration, the World Economic Forum ranks environmental risks among the top five global risks in its ‘2020 Global Risk Report’.

The 2020 Global risk report discusses the prominence of extreme weather, failure to adapt to climate change, environmental damage caused by humans, major biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and major natural disasters.

Financial institution Nedbank believes that, while agriculture is a key contributor to environmental impacts, it finds itself on the receiving end …

Some 11 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are currently at high risk of debt distress according to the latest debt sustainability analyses by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

Already, six countries are in debt distress and the debt burden is worsening in the region where the public debt ratio to gross domestic product has surged to 65.6 per cent from 56.4 per cent pre-Covid-19 period. 

A study conducted by the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University shows that there is a trend where African governments are mortgaging their natural resources to secure loans from China. This has often ignited debt distress when commodity prices collapse.

Read: Why do lenders want “COLLATERAL”?

This mortgaging of resource is referred to as collateralized sovereign debt. This is where a sovereign loan is secured by existing assets or future receipts owned by the borrowing government. The collateral could be commodities, future export revenues, …

Ethiopia plans to go ahead with it scheduled second filling of its embattled Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). When complete, the GERD will be the largest in Africa and have the capacity to produce in excess of 6,000 MW per day.

As expected, Egypt, the historic colonial-era custodian, will not have it and along with Sudan, has called for intervention by the African Union (AU) as well as international bodies and the UN Security Council citing security reasons.

Egypt and Sudan want the UN Security Council to intervene in the GERD owing to what the Sudanese government describes as ‘its impact on the safety and security of millions of people.’

They are of the view that Ethiopia is acting of its own accord and in total disregard of the danger, its actions pose to regional stability.  As such, Sudan wrote to the UN Security Council and Egypt has joined the …

Fairtrade International has committed to double the average income of farmers and workers in Africa.

Speaking during the ongoing 7th Africa Fairtrade Conference, Fairtrade International Board Chair Lynette Thorstensen said despite the hard times brought about by Covid-19, there is hope for the future of African farmers.

“This has been a very tough year globally, however, let us look at the future with optimism,” she said.

According to Thorstensen, Fairtrade International set aside a Covid relief fund in which more than 10.5 million Euros was raised by external governments, retailers, crowdfunding as well as internal sources by pledges from members for relief and resilience support for producer organisations.

“A total of 337 producer organisations from 17 countries have benefited from the fund. We believe that in the current climate, we need to move faster and ensure no one gets left behind.”

Speaking at the same event, Mary Kinyua, the Fairtrade …

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Extraordinary Summit has approved the mandate to deploy the regional standby force to Mozambique.

The country which is hosting the meeting is battling terrorism and insurgents in the northern region of Cabo Delgado.

The 16-member bloc has been grappling with how to respond to the conflict in which thousands have been killed since 2017.

The insurgency, led by an Islamist group known as the Sunnar (popularly known locally as Al-Shabaab), has destabilized the region since October 2017. Its strength has grown tremendously since last year. In October it made a daring raid on one of the major towns in the north, Mocimbao da Praia. And then in March this year it targeted foreign contract workers, including South Africans.

After months of deliberations and disagreements on what would be the best response to the instability and terrorism in the region- a decision to deploy forces …

The private sector in the African continent is set to receive US480 billion in investments over the next five years.

The investments will be made by a consortium of organizations under the G7 Development Finance Institutions (G7 DFI) which includes the European Investment Bank and the private sector arm of the African Development to support sustainable economic recovery and growth in Africa.

The proposed investments come at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a severe global economic and health crisis, including in the African continent.

The IMF estimates that sub-Saharan Africa needs additional financing of around $425 billion between now and 2025 to help strengthen the pandemic response spending and reduce poverty in the region.

This marks the first time the G7 DFIs have come together to make a collective partnership commitment to the African continent.

The G7 DFI group consists of CDC, Proparco (France), JICA and JBIC …

Africa’s second top economy, South Africa is yet unhinged with the grilling impacts of the coronavirus, which has already taken more than 58,000 lives and infected more than 1.7 million in the country.

“In view of the rising infections, we have therefore decided to move the country to Alert Level 3.This will take effect later this evening once the regulations have been gazetted,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday.

According to President Ramaphosa speech, different issues related to the adoption of the new alert level were raised and the national leader rallied people to embrace the new precautions for the longevity of the nation.

“We know that as difficult as the last 15 months have been, we have started to recover and rebuild. Although it has encountered several setbacks, our mass vaccination programme is gaining momentum and we are finally on the path to controlling the disease. But …

Will issuing of marijuana licenses to indigenous South Africans increase financial inclusion? That is the big question, or rather an unnecessary question that we a been forced to pose just to make it abundantly clear that, what is good for the goose, is good to the gender.

It is a rhetorical question to ask whether it will be of financial benefit to issue licenses to grow and sell a profitable, highly demanded plant with a readily available market. That is the plight of indigenous South Africans who allege that they are been side stepped in the issuing of marijuana licenses and effectively been excluded from the related financial benefits.

The financial benefits do not only end with increased household income for the indigenous but it will also translate to increased income for the government in terms of taxes, fees and foreign exchange from exports.

This report confirms that by …

Mahatma Gandhi’s great-granddaughter Ashish Lata Ramgobin has been jailed for seven years in prison after being found guilty by a Durban court for her role in a $441,811 fraud and forgery case on Monday.

The 56-year-old Ashish Lata Ramgobin was charged with scamming businessman SR Maharaj after he loaned her $458,310 for allegedly clearing import and Customs duties on a non-existent package from India. He was guaranteed a part of the profits.

Ramgobin is the daughter of renowned human rights activist Ela Gandhi and Mewa Ramgobind, who have both played instrumental roles in reviving the Phoenix Settlement established by Mahatma Gandhi during his tenure in South Africa.

On Monday, the court during the hearing was informed that Lata Ramgobin had met Maharaj, director of the New Africa Alliance Footwear Distributors, in August 2015.

When trial in the case against Lata Ramgobin started in 2015, Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi of the …