Fund launches business competition in refugee hosting areas
The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) and its partners International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, the United Nations High Commission for Refugee (UNHCR) and the Turkana County government have launched a global competition for private sector and social enterprise projects to support investment, development and...
BEAC must rethink its new forex regulation to save jobs in Central Africa
On March 1, 2019, a new Foreign Exchange Currency Regulation was adopted by the members of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa states – CEMAC.These member states – Gabon, Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Chad) – essentially mandated their Central Bank...
Kenya: Kakamega on cusp of commercial fish farming as arable land shrinks
Endowed with rainfall all-year-round and a population big enough to constitute a huge market for fish, Kakamega county has for generations looked to Lake Victoria for this important food resource rich in protein.Things are changing fast, and as the world explores ways and means of scaling up supply, Kakamega county...
ADB donates $440,000 to South Sudan and Sudan flood victims
The African Development Bank Group has approved an emergency assistance relief package of $440,000 to fund ongoing humanitarian and emergency relief efforts in areas recently hit by floods in South Sudan and Sudan.The package, from the bank’s special relief fund, will be split nearly equally between the two countries and...
Criminal gangs thirst for control of avocado trade in Kenya, southern Africa
As Kenyan fruit farmers get ready to take advantage of the expanding avocado market in China and other Far East countries, the Global Initiative Against Organised Crime warns about the emergence of the crop as a target of the criminal underworld in eastern and southern Africa. In the past six-month...
Kenya sets up $1.2m revolving youth employment fund
Kenya’s ministry of ICT, Innovation and Youth Affairs has launched a Ksh120 million ($1.2 million) initiative dubbed Future Bora (Bright Future) to support organisations that create income generation opportunities for groups designated economists as vulnerable. The demographics covered by the scheme include orphans, persons with a disability, youth displaced by...
Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala wins WTO director-general seat
Nigeria’s former finance minister and a former managing director of the World Bank, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has become the first female Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), shattering the glass ceiling. Okonjo-Iweala broke the glass ceiling, emerging as the first African and the first female to attain the position...
From the Maria Theresa Thaler, to the rupee, to the Kenya shilling
Early use of currency in Kenya commenced with the Arab influence who were among the first to use currency as we know it. In Muscat, they used a silver coin called the Maria Theresa Thaler (MT$), first minted in Austria in 1741 and, not surprisingly, they continued using it when...
Blast from the past: The evolution of the Kenyan currency
Two years after the unveiling new currency in December by the Central Bank of Kenya’s, the country seems to have put behind it the appearance of the money that characteristically bore portraits of heads of government and state.The present currency coins and notes unveiled on December 10, 2018 bear wildlife...
$170,000 banana, potato factory puts money in pockets of Kakamega youths
With Ksh17 million ($170,000) World Bank and national government funding, youths in a remote village in western Kenya are going about their lives with a spring in their legs. Reason? They are now reaping the benefits of a value addition factory in Khwisero subcounty in Kakamega County that is now...