The halal food market and industry in Kenya, east Africa’s economic hub, is growing, say experts, although reforms in regulation and certification are needed to underpin the sustainability of this growth.

As elsewhere, said Eugene Jernigan, director of International Trade Policy and Development at the Action Green for Trade and Sustainable Development (AGTSD) organisation, that serves small businesses in Kenya, Covid-19 hit food service sales in Kenya, and that included halal outlets.…

Decentralised finance – DeFi for short -is a growing variety of blockchain-based financial services, such as loans and insurance, that can operate without central control from an intermediary. While some say DeFi will democratise finance and liberate the under-banked, it is also an increasing area of interest for anti-money laundering (AML) authorities, who rely on the existence of intermediaries to enforce AML procedures.…

The Kenyan government is being urged to strengthen the country’s backward linkages in clothing and textile production to ease poorer Kenyans’ reliance on imports of commercial second-hand clothing, factory and shop rejects.
Phyllis Wakiaga, chief executive officer at the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM),  stressed to just-style how the textile, apparel and cotton sub-sector has been identified as a key priority, with the potential for high growth and economic impact.…

Sub-Saharan Africa has natural resources that aids the development of renewable energy, it has lots of sun, plentiful wind, and much potentially sustainable biomass. With the development of small-scale affordable renewable energy technologies, such systems have been promoted by major aid agencies keen to prevent deforestation and excessive reliance on fossil fuels, that – even where they are plentiful, have not usually led to widespread economic development.

The huge offshore finance leak unveiled last month (October 3) by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has highlighted the risks major companies face when doing business in offshore jurisdictions. Keith Nuthall and Andreia Nogueira report.

Major companies undertaking international business must comply with increasingly tough beneficial ownership transparency laws, and risk reputational damage if they are associated with particularly elaborate devices to avoid tax, even if it is legal.…

The huge offshore finance leak unveiled yesterday (October 3) by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners has highlighted the pressures AML reporters face in complying with increasingly tough beneficial ownership transparency laws.

Reports generated from 2.94 terabytes of data within 12 million documents leaked to the ICIJ from the confidential records of 14 offshore service providers have been analysed by 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.…

Demand for paints and coatings in Kenya is set to recover this year from the impact of Covid-19 epidemic, being driven by the rebound of building construction and other civil engineering works that require use of paints, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics has predicted.…

THE RULING council of the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) is preparing to agree major reforms to the International Cocoa Agreement, which should see the agreement increase its commitment to boost sustainability in the chocolate sector.

Council members are considering final changes committing the ICCO to ensuring that cocoa production, processing and manufacture is socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.…

AFRICA’s clothing and textile sector has been hit hard by Covid-19, with an emerging production industry being hit by falls in demand and disruption in supply chains. India-based market researchers Mordor Intelligence concluded in a report assessing the African industry’s prospects for 2021-5 that “disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic on global value chains and its impact on African businesses is already evident.”…

AS every small business owner knows, marketing and sales is a tough task, especially when the day-to-day delivery of services to existing clients takes up so much time. Hiring a full-time marketer is also beyond the means of most small businesses.…

TEXT fraud is maybe more dangerous that email fraud, given the tendency for mobile phone users to respond to texts swiftly and without careful thought, cyber-security experts warn.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also created opportunities for fraudsters using texts and messaging services such as WhatsApp to launch fishing and other attacks on the unwary.…

Taking up a new job where you are responsible for overseeing how a business operates in three countries during a global health pandemic is not a task many financial professionals would take on lightly. But that is what Busola Doregos, a Nigerian accountant working in Uganda has just done. …

THE UNITED Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has proposed creating a permanent ‘observatory’ monitoring cocoa markets, assessing value and costs, to help chocolate sales revenues be more equitably distributed throughout supply chains.

In a report called a ‘Comparative study on the distribution of value in European chocolate chains’, the FAO said such “objectified and cross-checked data” would aid “a multi-stakeholder discussion” at national and global levels on revenue sharing.…

KENYA’S clothing manufacturing industry, which had been growing at the cutting edge of sub-Saharan Africa’s expanding outsourcing sector, has been punched hard by Covid-19’s devastation of the garment markets within the United States and the European Union (EU).

The London-based Overseas Development Institute has noted that “garment factories in Sub-Saharan Africa have started laying off workers,” and Kenya is no exception.…

IT is fair to say that cheese and other processed dairy products have not traditionally played a key role in tickling the Kenyan collective palate, but that was yesterday. Now, as the country, east Africa’s economic dynamo, grows a middle class interested in consumer consumption, there has been exponential growing demand for dairy products of all kinds.…

Kenya will start to grow genetically modified cotton this year, becoming the first country to do so in Eastern Africa. The move is significant as it is likely to inspire other counties in the region start to grow Bt cotton hybrids that are resistant to African bollworm and other pests.…

THE HEAD of the Kenyan export processing zone that will be hosting a new factory run by Sri Lankan apparel and textile manufacturer MAS Holdings, has told just-style that the new plant will involve the creation of between 3,000 and 3,500 jobs directly, when it starts operations by January 20.…

Beauty markets in sub-Saharan Africa are becoming more sophisticated, and with this comes an increasing desire by consumers to use cosmetics that better match their own skin and hair characteristics, rather than utilising products that of more universal appeal.

Nigeria’s personal care product industry continues to grow, and given its population is the largest in Africa – now estimated by the United Nations at 200 million – this market inevitably has the most potential in the continent.…

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) Governor Patrick Njoroge have unveiled the latest weapon in the country’s battle against corruption, counterfeiting and money laundering with the introducion new banknotes. The Kenyan government requires old Kenyan Shilling KES1,000 (USD9.87) notes to be exchanged for the new bills by October 1, with the new KES50 (USD0.49), KES100 (USD0.99), KES200 (USD1.97) and KES500 (USD4.93) notes being phased in gradually.…

MONEY service businesses (MSBs) are having a tougher time operating in compliance with international AMF/CFT rules, especially those in emerging market countries, where they have to deal with a double challenge of tighter controls and derisking by banking partners.

MSBs throughout the Middle East, for instance, have been hit by derisking from correspondent banks as well as designations by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).…

AFRICA is without doubt the continent to watch for airport and air traffic control investment in the future. It is the world’s second most populous continent (home to more than 1.2 billion people), and according to Airports Council International (World) – ACI World – Africa was the fastest growing region for air passenger traffic in 2017 and 2018, which rose 6.3% in 2017 year-on-year and 10.8% in 2018 to June year-to-date, year-on-year.…

WITH Kenya’s economy still growing fast – its GDP is projected to increase by 5.8% this year (2019) east Africa’s economic hub is expected to provide the paint and coatings sector plenty of extra sales. Such growth in the construction industry is reflected in its neighbouring countries, notably Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, offering additional sales for companies with the scale to score regional sales.…

THE PERCEPTION of beauty and hence the design and supply of personal care products is slowly changing in sub-Saharan Africa as its increasingly wealthy middle class consumers take a more personalised approach to how they look. The region has a widely diversified consumer-base, whose varied tastes are pushing brands to rethink personalising cosmetics and personal care products like never before. …

AMERICAN confectioners may suffer from the latest tit-for-tat tariff exchange between the USA and China, with retaliatory duties from China targeting US confectionery exports. Many of these duties are high – at 25% – imposed from September 24 on US-made sugar; cocoa powder; milk powder; honey; jams; and more; plus 20% duties on US-made confectionery without cocoa; chewing gum; some chocolates; and more.…

The Kenyan Senate is consulting on a proposed law that will commit international mining companies to hire Kenya-based staff and source supplies locally. The Local Content Bill (see http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/pdfdownloads/bills/2016/LocalContentBill_2016.pdf) has been reintroduced formally to the Senate this year – an original text had been tabled in 2016, but debates were interrupted by Kenya’s 2017 general election.…

EDUCATIONALISTS have called upon Kenyan universities to include social justice and transformation in their teaching curriculum, to prepare graduates to serve their societies selflessly and diligently.

At a conference called ‘Touching Hearts, Teaching Minds and Transforming Lives’, staged at Tangaza University College, in the capital Nairobi, delegates were told Kenyan students are not fully prepared for the society they are expected work and serve within, upon graduation in the current system.…

EAST African countries maybe updating their anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) legislation and strengthening related institutions, but experts warn that a lack of enforcement will aid the proliferation of ML and TF in the region.

In Kenya, a Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering (Amendment) Bill was approved by the country’s parliament last March (2017).…

THE BUSINESS of selling paints and other coating products is expected to skyrocket in Kenya as the government implements President Uhuru Kenyatta’s agenda of providing affordable housing in urban and rural areas and promoting manufacturing industry, over the next five years.…

TOBACCO farming in Kenya is facing challenging times, with Tobacco Journal International being warned by farmers, government officials and market researchers that large-scale cultivation of the crop has been declining for five years in its traditional western region heartland.

Experts say output decline has been noted in the administrative areas that have dominated Kenyan tobacco leaf production.…

A SOMALIA air traffic control organisation has taken control of the country’s civilian airspace 26 years after the collapse of the country’s government left ATC affairs in the hands of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The handover of control to the Somali Civil Aviation and Meteorology Authority (SCAMA) happened on December 28 (2017).…

FINANCIAL fraud, as all practitioners know, has become increasingly international, a trend that will doubtless continue. For law enforcers based on national units of theoretically sovereign countries, this poses challenges, and one particularly tough nut to crack are procedures to extradite suspects to face trial in the country where their alleged victims reside.…

SUB-SAHARAN Africa continues to grow as a key market for personal care product brands, with enlarging middle classes providing more spending power – however, the region’s most mature market – South Africa – has been experiencing some stagnation.

The rest of the region still is performing as emerging markets should – with growing sales, even when uneven across categories, giving brands much hope for the future.…

THE SOMALIA National University (SONU) is opening the first journalist school to operate in the county in 26 years, as Somalia’s growing peace and stability has seen the launch of newspapers, websites and radio stations in the country. Expert training is needed as the horrors of war in Somalia are still in the air, with journalists risking conflict with Islamist insurgents Al-Shabab and other armed gangs.…

Kenya is likely to become the second country in east Africa after Rwanda to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as drones, for commercial purposes, according to Capt. Gilbert Kibe, director general of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA).

Speaking during a ‘Drones East Africa Conference’ held in Nairobi on June 20-21, Kibe briefed delegates on draft regulations that will open Kenya skies to UAVs: “The policy procedures and regulations for remotely piloted aircraft systems…have been approved and will provide a roadmap to the industry,” Kibe told delegates at the event, organised by the International Quality and Productivity Centre (IQPC).…

THE EVER-intensifying skyline of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, illustrates the rapid economic growth of this equatorial East African country, and its growing workforce is increasingly keen to buy deodorants to keep them dry and comfortable in the office and outside.

An increased focus on banking, industry, manufacturing and construction have raised the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 5.3% year-on-year in 2014 and 5.6% in 2015 (Deloitte Economic Outlook 2016).…

KENYA is east Africa’s economic dynamo and what happens in this jurisdiction has a lot of influence over government policy in neighbouring countries. So, the fact that the Kenyan government is now pushing hard on installing detailed public accounting standards, following in the footsteps of next-door Tanzania – is important.…

THE MIDDLE East and Africa is certainly a promising regional market for nonwovens manufacturers, given the high level of economic growth in many countries and the rise of consumer-culture focused middle classes. But companies need to be sophisticated in their investment and sales tactics given the immense variety of economic and social fortunes experienced by countries in this most diverse region.…

KENYA’S EDUCATION MINISTER CALLS FOR LESS GOVERNMENT MEDDLING IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITY MANAGEMENT

Kenya’s education minister has called for African governments to pull away from direct management of their country’s universities, saying such meddling is unnecessary and can hinder the development of effective management.…

KENYA has long been regarded as east Africa’s economic powerhouse, with residential and industrial construction boosting sales of paints and coatings – and for now there seems to be no halt in this progress. Indeed, the last World Bank assessment of growth in this 45 million people country was that GDP rose by 5.6% in 2015.…

SUB-Saharan Africa offers the personal care product a real chance to see solid and steep growth in sales in upcoming years, with the region’s middle class growing in size and prosperity, served by international brands boosting their retail presence, especially in larger urban markets.…

The Kenya bath and shower product market is projected to grow on average by 3% year-on-year to 2020, according to UK-based market researcher Euromonitor International. In a report released this September (2016), the sector during 2015 was valued at Kenyan Shillings KES2.4 billion (USD23.4 million at recent exchange rates).…

SECURITY and peace is slowly returning to Somalia, as its internationally-recognised government slowly gains power and extremist insurgents lose authority. But while relative safety is encouraging the return of entrepreneurs, it also emboldens commercial criminals. Ramadhan Rajab reports.

SALIM Nur, 49, had hoped to be part of Somali’s renewal by waging a war – not on the military frontline, but using markets as battlegrounds for economic revival.…

CONCERN is growing in Kenya that its meat and livestock industry will be kicked out from the European Union’s EU) ‘market access regulation’ (MAR) from October 1, which has granted its exporters duty-free and quota-free access to EU consumers and businesses since 2008.…

The Kenyan textiles and apparels industry has welcomed an anticipated trade deal between Kenya and Turkey designed to boost annual trade volumes between the two countries to USD1 billion, up from the prevailing USD144 million. The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM), an umbrella body that represents firms across the industrial sector in Kenya, sees this as a reinforcement of long standing trade partnership between Kenya and Turkey, as well as a win for textiles.…

MOBILE money transactions surged in 2015 across the world – increasing by 31% to reach 411 million mobile money accounts, and this is a critical platform for expanding financial inclusion globally, according to GSMA, a UK-based global mobile industry association, in its February 2016 annual report on the ‘State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money’. …

Regardless of the debate about whether China is losing its shine as a clothing source, brands will always be looking for a competitive edge in new manufacturing hubs.

Myanmar’s low wage garments sector, for instance, is poised for rapid growth. The country’s first democratically elected government in 50 years is set to assume power in April and several reforms have already been made to bolster the country’s appeal as a sourcing destination for international clothing brands.…

China pharmaceutical industry investors want to help sub-Saharan African countries meet growing domestic demand for medicine in return for tax breaks and private-public partnership initiatives. But there are difficulties – including product quality and standards issues that impede the flow of Chinese Yuan into African pharma production.…

Kenya is the third largest market for industrial paints and coatings in sub-Saharan Africa, ranking behind South Africa and Nigeria, according to regional analysis conducted by market researchers Frost & Sullivan.
According to their report, released last May (2014), the three countries are projected to have a joint market volume of over 140 million litres for industrial paints and coatings by 2017.…

East Africa is emerging as an attractive sourcing alternative for apparel and textile producers around the world as costs in Chinese outsourcing centres rise especially. With cheaper labour and resources, the region has already attracted foreign investment, particularly from Asia.

International apparel and textile producers are looking hard at Ethiopia as an attractive production and sourcing destination.…

One of the biggest expanding markets for cosmetics and personal care products is sub-Saharan Africa. A key exporter to the region, L’Oréal has estimated that the overall African beauty and personal care market generated EUR6.93 billion (USD8.61 billion) in 2012, growing at between 8% and 10% annually, compared to a global market growth rate near 4%.…

GREATER integration and cooperation among African states is needed to boost business and investment in the cotton, textiles and apparel sector of the continent, a three-day industry conference in Nairobi, Kenya, was told.

The Origin Africa event from November 10-12 brought together clothing and textile industry players and experts heard that national cotton apparel and fabric sectors within Africa were duplicating products when a collaborative approach could be more effective.…

KENYA’S meat industry is worried that east Africa’s meat and livestock sector could suffer from the impact of subsidised European Union (EU) exports now a trade deal has been agreed between the EU and the East African Community (EAC).

Speaking days after an Economic Partnership Agreement (EAP) has been agreed between the two, Qalicha Wario, chief executive officer of the Kenya Livestock Marketing Council, warned: “I think that if they give a subsidy of 80% per cent [to EU farmers] it is not fair.”…

The Kenyan government has confirmed to just-style that its ministry of industrialization and enterprise development has entered into a deal with Chinese firm Jiangsu Lianfa Textile Company to build a major textile plant. The Nantong, Jiangsu province-based corporation has agreed to build the plant at Naivasha, a lakeside town ninety-two kilometres north-west of Nairobi, the country’s capital.…

KENYAN knitwear exporters maybe the biggest knitting sector winners from a comprehensive trade deal struck between the European Union (EU) and the East African Community (EAC), which was finalised on October 16. It should boost trade between the two regions – including of yarns and knitted or crocheted clothing and fabrics.…

Li & Fung Ltd may have been unwilling to discuss claims that it was considering investing in the country’s planned Athi River export processing zone ‘textile city’ but the truth is that Africa is increasingly a focus of foreign clothing and textile investment.…

Chinese investment in sub-Saharan Africa’s textile processing sector is creating new capacity for finishing, but progress is uneven. Whilst China’s growing presence in the region is far from universally popular, industry figures consulted by International Dyer across the continent were generally positive about the trend.…

The growth in e-payment systems in emerging markets can pose challenges for local financial intelligence units (FIUs), often recently established and still grappling with suspicious transaction report systems in the formal banking sector.

Kenya is a case in point. It has a burgeoning mobile telephone-based e-payment economy, with consumers using e-wallets to buy and sell goods and services, many of whom lack access to formal bank accounts.…

THE CIVIL conflict and political tension that has wracked South Sudan since December has delayed already difficult discussions about building a new oil pipeline to this troubled, oil-rich and landlocked country. As it stands, South Sudan – the world’s newest country – has only one option for exporting its crude: a pipeline cutting through Sudan – the country from which it seceded in 2011, following a decades-long civil war.…

The growth in e-payment systems in emerging markets can pose challenges for financial intelligence units (FIU) in such countries, who are often just establishing themselves and grappling with suspicious transaction report systems in the formal banking sector.

Kenya is a case in point.…

THE PUBLICATION in October 2013 of the latest international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report on ‘hawala’ and other similar service providers (HOSSPs) has shed light on such alternative money remittance systems. These remain a complex area for anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) authorities to address. …

SUB-SAHARAN African makers of cosmetics and personal care products are profiting from a growing and increasingly stable regional market, where economic growth is increasing demand for personal luxuries.

A report, ‘Business in Africa – Corporate Insights’ by Dianna Games, Standard Bank South Africa estimates that more than half of Africa’s population would be living in urban areas by 2030 and 60% by 2050, when the population would be about 2.4 billion, compared to 1 billion now.…

BARACK Obama seems ready to accept an extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for another 15 years before it expires in 2015, but sub-Saharan African textile manufacturers might have mixed feelings.

African ambassadors in Washington DC have been under strict instructions from their governments to lobby the United States Congress to renew the law, forming an ambassadors’ AGOA working group led by Ethiopian ambassador Girma Birru.…

VIETNAM’S trade ministry is targeting Africa as an export market for its textile production, encouraging fabric manufacturers to follow Vietnamese clothing companies in successfully scoring sales in this fast developing continent. The African, south Asian and east Asian trade department at Vietnam’s ministry of industry and trade (MOIT) has been promoting the potential of these markets in recent months at conferences and trade shows, stressing that Africa holds some of the greatest export potential for Vietnamese manufacturers.…

Edward Shirobo Otieno knows buying cosmetics and beauty products are not going to be a priority for the vast majority of South Sudan’s 10 million people at this time. In the world’s newest country, independent since July 2011, more than 80% of its consumers live on less than USD1 a day.…

THE KENYAN government is pushing for an extension of the USA’s African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), which gives sub-Saharan African exporters special access to American markets. The country’s east African affairs, commerce and tourism minister (cabinet secretary) wants AGOA extended at least 10 years from its current September 30, 2015, expiry date: “If possible, we would like to have the current protocol transformed into a permanent trade agreement,” added Kandie, addressing officials of the African Cotton and Textile Industries Federation in Nairobi on June 24.…

IF there is one paint ingredient that marketers agree should be left off the label, it has to be lead. General and scientific opinion agrees this metal causes health problems and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), working with the UN Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) has embarked on plans to eliminate architectural and household lead paints in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2020.…

TRADITIONAL herbal medicine in Africa may have its critics, but some conventional nurses say it should be taken more seriously and be given a proper career path and mire training. Take Kenya – its ministry of public health and sanitation indicates the country’s conventional hospitals, health centres, dispensaries and clinics cater for only 30% of the population.…

BY ANDREW GREEN, IN KAMPALA; AND BILLCORCORAN, IN CAPE TOWN

THE TRIPLING in the size of Africa’s middle class over the last 30 years to what the African Development Bank estimates is now 313 million people coupled with increased urbanisation, are driving the growth of the continent’s cosmetics industry and markets.…

BY ANDREW GREEN, IN KAMPALA

For publishers working in east Africa, textbooks spell survival, but two major western publishers have found recently that the ethical dilemmas of working in the region can be hard to navigate.

With fierce competition for those contracts and limited local oversight capacity, the industry is dogged by persistent rumors of requests for and payments of bribery, money paid to delay rival’s books and other forms of corruption.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN ARM of the Oxford University Press (OUP) will pay GBP1.89 million through a UK High Court civil recovery order for illegally bribing Tanzanian and Kenyan officials to win school textbook contracts. The bribes were made through Oxford Publishing Limited’s (OPL) Kenyan and Tanzanian subsidiaries OUP East Africa and OUP Tanzania.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, IN CAPE TOWN; MOHAMMED YUSUF, IN NAIROBI; AND KEITH NUTHALL

A BOOK launched at last December’s Durban international climate change conference has focused on the growing potential for sugar to be a biofuel feedstock in Africa. ‘Bioenergy for Sustainable Development and International Competitiveness:

The Role of Sugar Cane in Africa’ was written by 44 authors representing 30 organisations in 16 countries and was published by Routledge.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE UN agency charged with fighting HIV/AIDS has welcomed a decision by the Kenya high court that an existing national law fighting fake drugs is too loosely worded and could promote the seizure of generic medicines made by legitimate manufacturers.…

BY WACHIRA KIGOTHO

TO say Somalia is a mixed bag for the tobacco industry is an understatement. On the one hand, there is a very weak formal government, whose writ does not run in much of the country. So no public place smoking bans, advertising restrictions and ingredient controls to worry about in this east African country: tobacco is sold freely through a thriving private sector.…

BY ALYSHAH HASHAM

KENYA, and its capital Nairobi, is the business hub of east Africa. It also has the reputation of being one of the world’s most corrupt places – a place where bribery is an accepted part of doing business.…

BY GEORGE STONE

THE KYOTO Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has made slow progress in Africa, but schemes are slowly getting off the ground, led by programmes in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

Under the United Nations-backed CDM process, projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to sustainable development can earn saleable certified emission reduction (CER) credits.…

BY AHMAD PATHONI, ALYSHAH HASHAM, MARK ROWE and KEITH NUTHALL

GIVEN the constant flow of news about tougher tobacco industry regulations from all continents, tobacco executives could be forgiven for thinking there are no countries where they have a relative free hand to sell their products.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

PIRACY has increased exponentially off the coast of Somalia in recent years, with ships hijacked deep into international waters despite the presence of a multi-national naval task force, and pirates demanding ever higher ransoms from shipping companies. But while the spoils of piracy are evident in coastal Somali towns, tracking down where the remaining millions of dollars disappear to is hard to pin down, with allegations circulating of ransom money entering the real estate markets of Kenya, to money laundering in Yemen and Dubai.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE POWER of photographs to inspire sustainable development has been highlighted in a UN Development Programme (UNDP) contest. The ‘Picture This: Caring for the Earth’ competition, organised with the Olympus Corporation and the Agence France-Presse (AFP) was designed to show how "ordinary people work to preserve the environment and reduce the effects of climate change in their communities", said a UNDP note.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS and BILL CORCORAN, in Johannesburg; and WACHIRA KIGOTHO, in Nairobi

WITH sub-Saharan Africa’s mobile telecommunications sector growing healthily and its offshore oil sector showing signs of great promise in the short and medium term, the region – usually regarded as the world’s poorest and least stable – could be a zone of stability during the global recession.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A BOUNTY of cheap carbon free energy is lurking beneath many developing countries in the shape of geothermal power generation, with new technology making it cheaper and easier to source than ever before. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and Kenyan power company KenGen have carried out a demonstration project testing advanced seismic and drilling techniques to make geothermal power plants cheaper to build.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ETHIOPIA COMMODITY EXCHANGE OPENS

ETHIOPIA has opened a commodity exchange, designed to bring order to the country’s often chaotic food markets. Their informality effectively forces farmers to sell locally to traders they know and trust. This prevents commodities moving from regions where there is abundance to those where there are shortages, intensifying the risk of famine and for prices to plummet in districts with a production glut.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

"EAT your greens": this common-or-garden parental health advice may boost the health and wealth of Kenyan rural communities in an innovative market garden development project. The UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is spending US$26.6 million on improving vegetable production and distribution for local markets, with the aim not only of boosting local prosperity, but also improving the diets of local consumers, improving their health and in turn making them more productive.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

FROM the scorching heat of Kenya’s northern border with the Sudan to the unforgiving conditions of Afghanistan, International Red Cross nurse Jenny Hayward-Karlsson has seen it all during a varied and challenging 20-year career working in the world’s war zones.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

THE FORTEEN countries of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) have their AML/CFT work cut out. Under-funded, lacking resources, short of political will and working in a region that leaks money like a sieve…it is a demanding context for the group’s daunting tasks.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

CENTRAL bankers, drug barons, warlords, corporate bosses and small town crooks in Africa are all washing their money despite attempts by governments and international law enforcement agencies to bring them to book. But financial crime has never been as lucrative as now on the world’s poorest continent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE KENYAN trade minister charged with pushing forward compromise on agricultural issues at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit has called on his colleagues to abandon political caution to make a deal possible. Mukhisa Kituyi said at the summit’s first agriculture meeting: "Our diplomats in Geneva and our experts from capitals have not succeeded (in lower level talks) and now it is for ministers to show leadership and take responsibility and calculated risks."…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE KENYAN trade minister charged with pushing forward compromise on agricultural issues at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit has called on his colleagues to abandon political caution to make a deal possible. Mukhisa Kituyi said at the summit’s first agriculture meeting: “Our diplomats in Geneva and our experts from capitals have not succeeded (in lower level talks) and now it is for ministers to show leadership and take responsibility and calculated risks.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MALARIA parasites make humans infected with the disease when in its transmissible phase more attractive to mosquitoes, encouraging them to bite, become infected themselves, and then spread it to other hosts, researchers claim. The fact that mosquitoes carrying a fully developed malaria parasite are manipulated by this organism to bite more frequently was already known.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan facing unprecedented pressure for his resignation over the involvement of his son in the brewing Iraq oil for food scandal, the spotlight has again fallen on the finances of his global body.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GOOD practice of an innovative honey company has been highlighted through its winning a United Nations Development Programme prize for promoting small-scale honey production in Kenya. Honey Care Africa, supported by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, has won the US$30,000 Equator Prize.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GOOD practice of an innovative honey company has been highlighted through its winning a United Nations Development Programme prize for promoting small-scale honey production in Kenya. Honey Care Africa, supported by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, has won the US$30,000 Equator Prize.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
THE KENYAN finance Minister Chris Okemo has granted competition approval for Coca Cola Sabco, of South Africa, to increase its dominance of the east African country’s soft drinks market.

Sabco is now likely to try and increase its stake in Nairobi Bottlers, which has 52 per cent of the market, and acquire opposition East African Bottlers, which has a market share of roughly two per cent.…