Browsing: World Bank

That year, in 2015, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania settled for a three-year plan to phase out the importation of used clothes, a major exporter been the United States. To realise the intended ban, taxes were increased on second-hand clothes were increased effectively deterring their importation. The plan was to completely ban the import of second-hand clothes as of 2019.

This ambitious vision was never realized as the Trump administration issued an ultimatum for EAC to rescind the ban on second-hand clothes by 23 February 2018 or, as the DW writer Isaac Mugabi puts it ‘face the consequences.’…

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 …

To celebrate this year’s Day of the African Child, the NGO, Kitamu Africa is conducting a campaign to raise funds for a water project that will benefit over 50 orphans at the Canaan Children Home in Arusha, Tanzania.

The children’s center was set up and registered in 2013 by the archdiocese of KKKT (Catholic Church) to help vulnerable orphans that lost their parents to Aids and who were also unfortunately born with the virus.

“Out of the 51 children at the center, 25 of the children are living with HIV,” details Dr. Alex Lengeju, the Director of Canaan Children Home.

The orphanage is facing several challenges including shortage of clothes, textbooks, school bags and cooking oil among other necessities, “…but the biggest challenge we have around here is water especially during this Covid pandemic we require much more water for sanitation,” the Director emphasized.

He explained that engineers have surveyed …

West Africa region received $465 million in funding from the World Bank for regional electricity access which will see countries in the region expand electricity to over a million people.

The World group approved the funds to the new Regional Electricity Access and Battery-Energy  Storage Technologies (BEST) Project which will increase grid connections to fragile areas, strengthen WAPP’s network operation with battery energy storage technologies infrastructure and build the capacity of the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERERA).

Through the project, countries in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will enhance power system stability for 3.5 million people and increase renewable energy integration in the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP).

The project will pave way for increased renewable energy generation, investment and transmission across the West Africa region.

“West Africa is on the cusp of a regional power market that promises significant development benefits and potential for private …

The Sub-Saharan Africa economic growth is forecast to resume to 2.8 percent in 2021 and further rise to 3.3 percent in 2022 according to World Bank.

The growth is due to higher commodity prices, containment of the pandemic, and stronger external demand mostly from the United States and China.

According to the recently updated report from World Bank, despite the provision of vaccines by COVAX, procurements, and logistics challenges are expected to continue to affect the rollout of the vaccination. In the Central African Republic, Kenya, Niger, and Equatorial Guinea delays in major investments in extractives and infrastructure due to policy uncertainty and the existing effects of the pandemic will affect the recovery of the economies.

“Per capita income levels in 2022 are expected to be 4% lower on average than in 2019. Conditions in the region’s fragile and conflict-affected countries are expected to be particularly challenging; their average output …

Egypt’s economy is expected to grow by 2.3 percent in the 2020/2021 fiscal year from the previous project of 3.7 percent in January 2021 according to the World Bank’s Economic Prospects report June 2021.

According to the report, In the 2021/2022 fiscal year Egypt is expected to see further growth rise to 4.5 per cent down from 5.8 percent in the January report, which is a decrease of 1.3percent. In the Fiscal year 2022/2023, the report projects a growth rise of 5.5 percent.

According to the World Bank, in the first half of 2021 Egypt’s economy remained sluggish despite the relaxation of lockdown restrictions. Following unprecedented support in 2020, fiscal policy is expected to be less accommodative in 2021 while the average primary fiscal deficit is expected to be about 4 percent of GDP which is about two thirds its level in 2020.

“The scope for further financial support is …

Consider everything you have heard about Africa is wrong and start on a quest to know and understand the continent better when it comes to the opportunities it has to offer. 

For anyone giving investing in Africa a wide berth, it is because of what they have heard and rarely due to what they have experienced. This will lead to missing the myriad opportunities the continent has in the different sectors where investment is badly needed.

For starters, Africa is not only the fastest-growing continent on the planet but it is also fuelled by a young and rapidly urbanizing population which will drive demand for a long time to come.…

Remittance to Kenya increased by 10 percent to $3,095 million in 2020 from $2,796 million in 2019 while in Uganda they dropped to $1.1 billion in 2020 from $1.4 billion in 2019.

According to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), the increase accounted for three percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The remittance was projected to decrease in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Financial innovations such as mobile money which have opened more convenient transactions highly contributed to the increase in remittance flow to Kenya.

With the restriction measures which were put in place to curb the spread of the virus, mobile money made it easy for people to send and receive money.

“The rapid acceleration of digitalization has been the ‘silver lining narrative’ of the pandemic. Remittances have been one of the key beneficiaries of digital transformation as members of the diaspora sent funds to their loved …

The World Bank Group has charged Nigeria and other African countries to embrace lower-carbon sources of energy in a bid to increase electricity access and also reduce subsidies being applied on fossil fuels.

According to the Bretton Wood institution, regions affiliated to the World bank ought to evaluate themselves on avenues to electricity access, in a economical way.

In a virtual press briefing the President of the World Bank Group, David Malpass, noted that the Bank intends to work with countries on their long-term strategy, by addressing questions as to where they will get the growth in electricity access that they need, and what are the lower-carbon sources of energy that are available.

“This might be hydro; it might be natural gas; it might be improvements in the transmission grid that save electricity and allow more renewables to be brought on stream.

“We have solar projects in many of the …

CRDB is enjoying a remarkable dash for its shares having sold an impressive 5.0 million shares this week alone. The sudden increased appetite for CRB shares is not without cause, the bank strategically announced a possible 6.52per cent increase in dividend payout.

Now, even though the percentage increase is only a proposal (subject to approval by the Annual General Meeting) the public is gabbling up the shares in lure of the possible increased payout.

The new amount was first proposed in the bank’s annual report for 2020, the 6.52 percent raises the initiatial USD 0.0073 (17/-) that was the payable dividend in 2019 to a lucrative USD 0.0025 (22/-) per share.

In its weekly Market Synopsis, Orbit Securities said that CRDB shares closed the week at usd 0.11 (245/). The impressive increase set CRDB ahead of the park in a week that had only three gainers on the Dar …