Search Results for: Kenya

Foreign mining companies may have a range of options to claim compensation against Kenya for revoking mining licenses granted between January 14 and May 15 and introducing new drilling charges and/or royalty schemes, leading arbitration law experts advise.

Lawyers at US-based international law firm King & Spalding say companies with investments whose licenses were cancelled earlier this month and/or whose revenues are hit by new charges and/or royalties may be able to claim through international investment arbitration tribunals.…

ISLAMIC banks are big business in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but not thus far in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), however, recently took a USD5 million, 15% equity stake in Kenya’s Gulf African Bank (GAB) to support corporate finance and lending to small and medium businesses – its first in the sub-Saharan Islamic bank sector.…

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.…

If financial professionals ever doubted the utility of a fully functioning state for business, Somalia has since 1991 shown how its absence can undermine personal and commercial liberty.

And the lesson is underlined by the fate of Somaliland, a breakaway east African territory that declared independence from Somalia in 1991, based on land that was a British protectorate before 1960.…

THE WORLD Bank is funding a USD5.5 million project to help harmonise the pharmaceutical regulations of the five countries within the East African Community (EAC): namely Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Under the bank’s schedule, the African Medicine Regulatory Harmonisation Project should be completed by December 2014.…

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.…

THE MANAGING director of the Kenya Airports Authority has said construction for a USD657 million project to build a new greenfield terminal at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi will begin in November and be completed in 2017. Stephen Gichuki’s comments come as the authority secured a grant of Euro EUR5 million from the EU-Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund to help finance technical and management support for the project.…

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.…

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has advised the European Union (EU) to launch a series of studies to help assess the risk of Rift Valley Fever being introduced to livestock and humans in north Africa and the Middle East, potentially threatening Europe.…

THE ORGANISATION for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) has made a lot of noise about its anti-bribery convention. But some countries are failing to comply, and where others do – otherwise honest companies can lose trade. David Hayhurst and Keith Nuthall report.…