Browsing: Uganda

The 2023 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation shortlist represents ten African countries, including first timers Angola and Sierra Leone, and demonstrates the importance of engineering as an enabler of improved quality of life and sustained economic development.

The UK Royal Academy of Engineering shortlist of innovations tackle challenges central to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, including clean water and sanitation, sustainable cities and communities, good health and wellbeing, and clean energy, good health and wellbeing, and quality education.

Several water innovations are featured in the shortlist Africa Prize Engineering Innovation, including a real-time water quality monitoring and control system, an acid mine drainage solution to recycle contaminated water for human consumption, a portable unit that uses fish waste to boost production of vegetables, and a water management system to prevent excess borehole pumping and drying out of aquifers.…

Medical marijuana may very well be the agri-business that Africa needs to get its economies high in the global multi-billion agro-industry.

Already, Africa’s marijuana production is on the rise.

According to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) medical marijuana dispensary sales totalled US$11.5 million in just under one month. Other than the sales, OMMA also says in that same time, between January and February of 2019, it also raised more than US$3 million in taxes alone.

The following month, approximately US$873,361 came from the 7% gross receipts tax and US$1.3 from the 4.5% state sales tax.

Since OMMA began accepting applications for medical marijuana licensing, the state says it has pocketed well over US$7.1 million inpatient license fees and more than US$11 million in revenue generated in commercial license fees.

That is just one state. Consider how much the entire US has made from medical marijuana as a country. Worldwide, …

More importantly though, a clear signal was sent to the EU Parliament that the colonial days are over and that meddling in affairs and interfering with matters that are of the exclusive sovereign remit of the host countries, Uganda and Tanzania, is simply not tolerated.

Following the EU Parliament’s action, Total Energies is to appear before the Parliament for a hearing and answer queries that the members of parliament will have. That coupled with the fact that Total has an ongoing court case in France regarding an allegation of its failure to put in place an adequate vigilance plan covering health, safety, environment, and human rights risks as required by French law, related to the the same EACOP project, it will be interesting to see whether or not Total Energies might drop out of the project at the risk of being exposed to breach of contract claims by the other …

What is good for the goose must also be good for the gander. However, the EU commission has commissioned the Baltic pipe project, somewhat similar to the EACOP. The Baltic Pipe project was inaugurated on September 27, 2022, at an opening ceremony in Goleniów, Poland.…

The ministry argued that the oil pipeline project is being implemented strictly on international safety, environmental and social aspects, including the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA).

The EACOP project has managed to amass at least US$20 billion, benefiting the two neighbouring nations immensely. That’s why Tanzania is stern on highlighting key issues regarding human rights and environmental risks.

“A dedicated HRIA was undertaken as part of the project implementation process. The HRIA assessed and put in place measures for addressing the potential adverse of the project on the human rights enjoyment,” the statement pointed out.

According to the EU Parliament statement, at least 100,000 people have been forced to move out of their homes to leave the path for the pipeline.…

The AfCFTA Agreement has been signed by 54 African nations thus far.  Among them, 46 tariff proposals have been filed, including one by the Customs Union. Furthermore, 29 tariff proposals are technically validated for trade.

Under the Rules of Origin discussions, 87.7% of import tariffs have been settled, while phase two consultations on Investment, Intellectual Property Rights, Competition Policy, Women and Youth in Trade, and Digital Trade are underway.…

There are increasingly more and more ‘outbreaks’ of non-communicable diseases in Africa and more so in sub-Saharan Africa.

These lifestyle ailments are ironically a symbol of increasing income among the population. As more and more African countries rise from low-income to middle-income status, statistics show a correlation with the rising number of people suffering from non-communicable diseases.

The reason is simple; when you rise in income, people do not increase their eating of the vitamin-rich greens they used to eat when they could not afford unhealthy but yet prestigious red meat; no, they change their diet to gabble up the ‘rich man’ foods, unwittingly damaging their health.

A local paper puts it into perspective; ‘People’s eating habits are shifting from food rich in starchy staples, vegetables and fruits to a more westernized diet high in sugar, saturated fats and oils’ the recipe for non-communicable diseases.

The troubling fact is that …

Generally speaking, the proliferation of mobile phone technology has increased access to mobile money services (MMS) and is the backbone of mobile money deployment in both rural and urban areas of Africa.

“Despite its enormous benefits, embracing the usage and acceptance of mobile money has mostly been low due to security issues and challenges associated with the system,” warns professor Guma Ali from the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology.

In a paper titled ‘Evaluation of Key Security Issues Associated with Mobile Money Systems in Uganda,’ the pundit suggests the need to carry out a survey to evaluate the key security issues associated with mobile money systems in Uganda (and Africa).

In the study that followed, which employed a descriptive research design, and stratified random sampling technique to group the population, some 741 registered mobile money (MM) users and 447 registered MM agents along with 52 mobile network …