World Bank foresees Kenya’s economy to grow by 5.7 percent.

The World Bank projects that the Kenyan economy will grow by 5.7 per cent in 2013 supported by higher investment and low interest rates.

The World Bank Kenya Economic Update launched Monday attributes the higher growth compared to 4.7 per cent in 2012 to a stable macroeconomic environment, the peaceful elections in March 2013, and smooth transition of political power. 

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to improve further to 6 per cent in 2014.

“The government needs to create an enabling environment for private sector-led growth by continuing to invest in infrastructure, increasing domestic energy production, removing bottlenecks to doing

Read More

Warren Buffet calls for women to be included in boardrooms.

Revered billionaire investor warren Buffet ahs called for more women to be included in the companies’ top management and boards. In recent months, Mr. Buffet has been more vocal of supporting the inclusion of more women in company boards. He was convinced of this after reading Sheryl

Read More

Chris Kirubi to mentor young entrepreneurs.

Industrialist Chris Kirubi has come forward ad said he is ready to mentor young entrepreneurs, and says he will show them all the ropes needed to succeed in business. Mr. Kirubi, who also doubles up as DJ CK on Capital FM, has carved a niche in the manufacturing and media businesses, and was a top investor in Kenya Power before shelving off his shares earlier this year. 

Read More

Atwoli denies 150 million COTU fraud.

COTU Secretary General Francis Atwoli has denied his involvement in a 150 million shilling fraud at COTU. The organization has come under criticism recently for its support of the MPs salaries, which many view as earning too much salary for too little work. Mr. Atwoli has been at the helm of the workers umbrella body for more than a decade, and is again expected to stand in upcoming elections.

Read More

Farmers Commodity exchange takes shape.

The Cabinet has approved new laws setting up a market for trading of commodities and currencies. This paves the way for opening of an exchange that could give farmers access to a bigger market for their produce.
The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in April published draft regulations for setting up a futures exchange, which will now be published into law incorporating input from stakeholders.

Read More

Safaricom aims to integrate Wi-Fi on Matatus.

Safaricom is on an all out push to get the matatus plying the Nairobi route to have wireless internet- Wi-Fi. The company sees the endless traffic jams in the city’s road as an opportunity for commuters to surf free as they get distracted from the traffic jam. However, security precautions still remain, as

Read More

Safaricom overtakes EABL as the most valuable company in East Africa.

East African Breweries Limited (EABL) has lost its place as the NSE’s most valuable firm to Safaricom, following successive weeks of share price decline.

EABL, whose share was trading at Sh351 Thursday having opened at Sh358, now has a market capitalisation of Sh278 billion compared to Safaricom’s Sh294 billion.
Safaricom was trading at Sh7.35 per share Thursday, having remained above the Sh7 per share since the beginning of May.
Analysts say the EABL share has dropped due to a mixture of profit-taking and the adoption of a

Read More

Google launches cheap internet for Africa, South Asia.

Google has launched internet balloons; a service it hopes would bring internet to the world’s ‘marginalized regions’ in Africa and South Asia. Wrinkled and skinny at first, the translucent, jellyfish-shaped balloons will also provide internet to rural areas in the developed world, where internet service providers shy away from serving because of lack of ‘profit incentives’. 

If successful, the technology might allow countries to leapfrog the expense of laying fibre cable,

Read More

I&M Bank Plans to Fundraise for Regional Expansion.

I&M Bank Ltd., plans to raise money in the next year to fund its regional expansion, Chief Executive Officer Arun Mathur said. This comes as I&M Bank is set to being trading at the NSE this month.
The bank plans to begin operations in Uganda in the next 12 months, possibly by acquiring an existing lender, before venturing into South Sudan and Zambia, Executive Director Sarit Raja-Shah said in an interview to Bloomberg news. I&M already operates in Tanzania, Rwanda and Mauritius.

“We are still thinking of how to raise money,” Mathur, 59, said. He said the company has not yet determined how much it plans to raise. “There could be a rights issue, there could be an issue of debt and equity” carried out by July 2014, he said.

Profit increased by 21 percent at Kenyan banks last year to 107.9 billion shillings ($1.26 billion), helped by a surge in interest income after the central bank raised its benchmark rate to a record. Total assets grew 15 percent to 2.33 trillion shillings, according to central bank data. Earnings may grow further

Read More

Mombasa port falls behind Durban port in African trade.

Transporting goods by sea remains the most common way to trade globally, but in Africa cargo spends an abnormally long time in ports before it is moved inland, presenting a serious obstacle to the successful integration of sub-Saharan economies in worldwide trade networks. A World Bank study, titled ‘Why does cargo spend weeks in sub-Saharan African ports?’ shows.

Lessons from six countries, found the average cargo waiting time to be 20 days and that more than half of the time needed to transport cargo from ports to ­hinterland cities in landlocked countries in

Read More

Doing Business in Africa, Critical to Global Growth - U.S.

The United States government yesterday stressed the need and importance for foreign investors in the country and across the world to do businesses in the African continent.

Speaking at ongoing African-US Trade Exhibition held at the Baltimore Convention Center, the Governor of Maryland State, Mr. Martin O'Malley, maintained that doing businesses with Africa was

Read More

Talking business with Founder of Steers and Debonairs Pizza, Azam Samanani.

Steers and Debonairs Pizza, two fast food chains, launched in Kenya sixteen years ago. Azam Samanani – managing director of Hoggers Limited, the firm that runs the two franchises – told How we made it in Africa’s Dinfin Mulupi about doing business in Kenya’s restaurant market. Below are excerpts.

Steers launched in Kenya sixteen years ago. What was the inspiration then?
Sixteen years ago, the vision was that there was a market here for people who wanted international quality offerings. We have done pretty well since the beginning. We now run eight Steers and five Debonairs Pizza stores. There has always been a market for excellence and sixteen years ago we were the only ones doing this whereas today there are more people doing it and more people trying to do it.

There are unique business challenges to doing things right in different environments.
Africa has its unique challenges, Kenya has its unique challenges and Nairobi has its unique challenges. Every time someone tries to take an experience that isn’t organic to the environment and tries to

Read More

2 Great Kenyan incubation centers to launch your business.

Kenyan entrepreneurs seeking to start a business usually have a very hard time. Capital for starting is in short supply as banks are unwilling to lend to an untried client that has not made a name in the business circles. Clients are unwilling to commit, and most certainly employees are unwilling to be employed by a company that has yet to show any future growth prospects. 

What’s more, office space and internet are certainly out of reach from many budding entrepreneurs. To address this need, a few incubation centers have come up where one can incubate their ideas, be mentored and nurtured, sometimes be linked up with capital lenders and markets, and eventually see

Read More

Chinese solar panel makers to build power station in Garissa.

Chinese solar panel makers may bulk up in Africa after China finishes building one of the biggest solar power stations on the continent.

Chinese solar panel makers will supply most of the 140 million US dollars (Kshs. 12 billion) needed to build a solar power station in Garissa, Kenya, according to state-owned China Jiangxi Corporation for International Economic and Technical Cooperation, the deal's coordinator.

The coordinating company said Wednesday that the project will serve as the base for China's biggest

Read More

2013/2014 budget: Double digit growth looks far fetched.

One of the stated policies of the Kenyatta administration is to grow the economy by double digits. Indeed, for the Kenya Vision 2030 to be realized, the Kenyan economy will have to grow by 10 percent each year. Taking into account population growth, a growth anywhere below ten percent merely guarantees that the same standards of living will be maintained, since the additional growth will be erased by the increase in population. In the 2013/ 2014 budget, the sectors which would have contributed to the growth of the economy have not been given much attention.

Read More

2013/2014 budget: Public debt expected to increase.

The public debt will likely increase, as the government’s expected expenditure of 1.6 trillion shillings can barely be financed. One of the ways in which analysts expect the deficit to be plugged is to increase taxes of basic goods like tea, milk, and sugar, or borrow from the domestic market. Alternatively, the government could turn to external sources such as through donors and development partners. Under the Kibaki administration, public debt ballooned, but almost 95 percent of the budget was financed locally (excluding special projects such as free HIV/AIDS drugs undertaken by donors).

Read More

Cost of basic goods expected to increase in the 2013/2014 budget.

Cost of basic commodities like milk, bread, and sugar are expected to rise. The government will face severe budget constraints, as it seeks to implement devolution, and pay the high salaries of MPs amongst other new positions created in the new government structure. This is expected to hurt the common mwananchi much more, since they spend a huge chunk of their money on basic commodities, as compared to the well off where food accounts for a very minor proportion of their expenditure.

Read More

KCB orders 5 million cards to fight fraud.

KCB will introduce 5 million chip and PIN debit and pre-paid cards in the Kenyan market; joining standard chartered which is set to introduce the technology soon. The Kenya bankers Association- KBA had set a March 2014 deadline as the debt lenders should migrate from the current magnetic strip cards to chip based cards. This is aimed to curb the rampant debit and credit card fraud in the Kenyan market.

Read More

Nairobi, Johannesburg, and Lagos emerge as Africa’s most visited cities.

Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi have emerged the most popular destinations in Africa with over 5 million expected visitors in 2013, according to MasterCard’s Third Annual Global Destination Cities Index.
The recently released index ranks Johannesburg as the highest on the continent both in total number of visits and international visitors totalling 2,544,013 and generating the sum of $2.7 billion, while Lagos will have 2,164,897 visitors which will generate about $922 million, the report showed.
Eleven other African cities were including Cape Town (South Africa), Durban (South Africa), Nairobi (Kenya), Cairo (Egypt), Casablanca (Morocco), Accra (Ghana), Beira (Mozambique) , Kampala

Read More

Why are Africa’s low cost airlines struggling?

Adapted from the Economist: AFRICA is flourishing. Most countries are at peace, and average GDP growth is around 6%. Record numbers of children go to school. Life-expectancy has risen by a tenth over the past decade and foreign direct investment has tripled. Consumer spending will double over the next ten years. As part of this growth, low-cost airlines—to fly business people or holiday-makers within and between countries—are springing up. But they are running into problems. 1time and Velvet Sky, two South African low-cost carriers, went bust last year. FastJet, which markets itself as the first pan-African low-cost carrier, has been stalled by lawsuits and losses. What is holding back Africa's low-cost airlines?

There is no lack of demand, on some routes at least. Fly540, based in Kenya, had an annual turnover of $32m last year (up from $12m in 2007). Its flights from Nairobi to Mombasa, and to Zanzibar in neighbouring Tanzania, are popular with Kenya's emerging middle class. Traders from Lodwar, a

Read More