Browsing: World Bank

• Total students enrolled in the sixteen Regional Flagship TVET Institutes (RFTIs) increased from 6,971 students at baseline to 30,776 students at mid-term
• The project has surpassed its initial target to enrol 20,000 students annually in long-term and short-term training programs.
• According to the World Bank Enterprise Survey of 2015, over 25 per cent of firms surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa reported an inadequately educated workforce as a significant hindrance.

Education in Africa

Student enrolment in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges in East Africa has quadrupled from the baseline data.

In February, the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA) released a mid-term evaluation report supported by the World Bank-funded East Africa Skills for Transformation Project (EASTRIP) in Mombasa, Kenya 1.

The report was carried out to evaluate the project’s performance in its mid-term. It revealed that the total students enrolled in the sixteen Regional Flagship TVET Institutes (RFTIs) …

Since the advancement of the standard of living, most parts of the world have experienced a relatively rapid population growth than ever before which can be hugely beneficial for economic development if utilized strategically.  

Population growth is rapidly occurring in Africa, with Tanzania now hosting more than 59 million people in its vast, arable and mineral-rich land. This increase puts the East African country, which ascended last year to a low-middle-income status, in a much more advantageous position to move forward or experience a decline. 

The World Bank (WB) – one of Africa’s (and Tanzania’s) close development partner argues that Africa’s population is rising rapidly and will likely double by 2050. 

 READ:It’s a jumbo task as elephant population in Africa soars

“Africa will soon pass one billion people (it may already have) and could reach up to two billion people by 2050. This makes it the fastest-growing continent, and …

This comes as the IMF has downgraded economic prospects for countries in this cluster. The downgrades have, however, been offset relatively by projections for some commodity producers and exporters that were upgraded on the back of rising commodity prices.

The economic prospects between wealthy nations and low-income countries are expected to be divergent and this divergence will remain of great concern to multilateral lenders and world leaders. In wealthy nations, for example, aggregate output for the cluster economies is expected to regain its pre-pandemic trend path in 2022 and exceed it by 0.9% in 2024 whereas the cluster of nations comprise emerging markets and developing economies (excluding China) will remain 5.5% below their pre-pandemic forecasts in 2024.

This event should it occur as forecast will set back improvements in living standards.…

Justice Makau’s ruling was as follows, “I find as decided in the Court of Appeal decision, the petitioner has a right to mechanise and adopt technology in its operations. The matter in dispute is therefore effectively concluded and settled in terms stated.”

If the cry of the workers’ Union is true, then this ruling threatens more than 50,000 workers’ jobs and allegedly, already over 10,000 tea pickers have lost their jobs to the machines.

However, the odds are pinned against the peasants, the Kenya Tea Growers Association says the loss of jobs has nothing to do with the machines but rather ‘…tea companies reducing their workforce through natural attrition.…

• Tanzania’s cement demand is estimated to have clocked 5.9Mt and is growing fast.
• Maweni Limestone Ltd will be China’s first African entity producing cement on the continent instead of importing.
• The newly purchased plant by Huaxin Cement has already been upgraded to a production capacity of 1.6Mt/yr.

If there is a booming industry in Tanzania, it is the cement industry – an industry that has more than doubled in production in under a decade.

As of 2011, Tanzania was producing 2.4Mt annually, a figure that has shot up to 6.5Mt as of 2020.

Compared to the previous year, the production volume of cement grew by 44.5 per cent and is associated with rising construction activity in the country.

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Another marker of how well the industry is doing is the amount of investment the sector is getting annually. Consider the most recent buyout of Maweni Limestone Ltd by China’s Huaxin …

Toxic substances that are contained in e-waste contaminate the soil; however, they do not stop with the topsoil.

Heavy metals such as mercury, lithium, lead and barium leak through the earth all the way to the table water contaminating groundwater.

Now groundwater is the basic source of all water that we consume because groundwater is the water that eventually resurfaces as springs, ponds, streams, rivers and lakes.…

The National Treasury is projecting real GDP growth of 6.0 per cent and 5.8 per cent for 2021 and 2022 respectively and has used the same as the basis for its revenue projections. But this adds to the overall optimism being projected.

In September 2021, the Central Bank of Kenya Governor projected a 6.1 per cent growth rate for 2021 and 5.6 per cent in 2022.

The International Monetary Fund’s most recent forecast puts 2022 growth expectations at 6.0 per cent. The World Bank, on the other hand, projects growth to print at 4.5 per cent and 4.7 per cent in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

We really believe this optimism being projected around is largely irrational and the story of Kenya’s economic growth still remains a puzzle to us. …

The lender stated during the conference that the country’s economic objectives were still under threat from unsustainable debt.
The government announced last week that external debt grew to US$13.7 billion in September, up from roughly US$10.7 billion the previous year.
Zimbabwe’s debt accounts for more than half of the country’s GDP.…

The number of tourists arriving in Tanzania has increased an impressive 52% between January and November 2021 and with it, the country has enjoyed increased revenue collection of an even more impressive 69 per cent growth.

What has sparked this increase in tourists arrivals is, among other things, the country’s rigorous decimation of the Covid-19 uptake and the generally positive response of the public. Notably, as of 5^th December 2021, almost 2 million (1,699,523) vaccine doses have been administered.

As was the case elsewhere in the world outbreak of the pandemic fall in tourism arrivals severely affected the economy and more so the tourism and hospitality sectors.

To get a perspective of how the two sectors in Tanzania were hard hit, consider the fact that tourist arrivals in 2019 were slightly above 1.5 million yet this number dropped more than 50 per cent to a lowly 600,000 tourists in …

The World Bank released the country’s 18th Economic update in the first week of this month.

According to the institution, the change was majorly impacted by improvement in road and bridge building, the acquisition of additional aircraft for the continued revival of Uganda Airlines, and large classified investments.

Uganda has in the recent past heavily deployed and channelled its national cake towards improving its shambled infrastructure especially the road, railway, water and air transport systems.…