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

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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

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Spying claims put the future of data security at risk.

Ex- CIA IT security employee Edward Snowden spilled to the Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post that the US Government was conducting a secret surveillance of our online activities. He revealed that the US government was routinely accessing the servers of Facebook, Google, Apple and other internet giant companies to fish out suspicious patterns in our communication. Under the program dubbed ‘PRISM,’ the security agencies collected 98 billion pieces of intelligence worldwide.

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Teachers, farmers and small businesses biggest losers in budget.

Teachers, small farmers, and small businesses are the biggest losers in the 2013/14 budget that is to be unveiled tomorrow. This is after the government slashed kshs.100 billion for social programmes. For instance, 1.3 billion shillings that had been set aside for training of small scale businessmen, as well as to facilitate start of small businesses has been slashed from the budget.

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Evans Kidero: Scrap metal dealers’ days are numbered.

Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero will soon ban the trade in scrap metals, unless the businesses are properly registered. Whole parts of guard rails in the newly built Thika road have been vandalized by scrap metal dealers, who want a quick profit. Curiously, most of the scrap metal is exported to China, which has a large appetite for scrap metal to fuel its fledging manufacturing economy.

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Medicine, engineering students to pay higher fees.

Public University students will no longer pay the same fees in three months time, The permanent secretary for education, Joseph Kaimenyi has said. Previously, all students in the regular degree programs would have paid the same amount of fees, regardless of how cost intensive their course would have been. The new system of payment, known as’ differential unit payment’ will see fees for medicine students rise by as much as five times, if figures from parallel degree programs are anything to go by.

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Five Career Lessons from Big brother the Chase.

While many view the big brother Africa Chase game as pure entertainment, the reality is that it’s a game about power. It’s a game of love, of betrayal, of scheming, of pain, of bitterness, all enroute to the prize of $300,000 (kshs25 million). Here are five career lessons from big brother.

1. Strategy.

When Denzel from Uganda was evicted, he said that he wished he would have hidden his strategy, so he wouldn’t be seen as a threat. Strong candidates are likely to be nominated by their fellow housemates for being a ‘threat’, while weak housemates are likely to be nominated by their fellow housemates for being ‘boring’ and not bringing anything to the table. Just like in an office, a strong

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Google acquires mobile mapping company, Waze.

Internet giant Google Inc has acquired waze, an Israeli mobile mapping real time service. Analysts estimate the deal to be worth about $1.3 billion. Google sees the smartphones market as ‘essential’ to its growth prospects, and this deal is informed by that. It is likely that also Google purchased waze to

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Governors to meet over President Kenyatta’s ascent to bill.

Governors will meet shortly after President Kenyatta assented to a bill reducing the counties allocation fund from258 billion shillings to 210 billion shillings. The 48 billion shillings shortfall is being seen by some as attempts to scuttle the devolution process, something that the President has denied. 

 Senators, who represent the counties interest at the national level, had sought 258 billion shillings, but

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Sudan freezes oil imports from South Sudan.

Sudan will freeze all oil imports from South Sudan beginning this month. Sudan alleges that South Sudan is supporting rebels in the north, something that South Sudan disputes. South Sudan o its part also alleges that Khartoum is sponsoring rebels in the South. Relations between the two Sudans’ have been frosty ever since South Sudan became the world’s newest nation in 2011.

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CMA to train small investors.

The capital markets Authority- CMA, will hold a public forum for small investors, to educate them about capital markets, investing in shares, and raising money through the Nairobi Securities exchange- NSE. While the KenGen IPO is debited as bringing the investment of shares into the public mainstream, subsequent losses in Eveready, Safaricom and Access Kenya shares saw many retail investors pull away from the capital markets, for fear of losing money.

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Devolution: Counties short of 48 billion shillings.

Counties will have to make do with 48 billion shillings less, after President Uhuru Kenyatta assented to a bill which puts the county revenue allocation to 210 billion shillings, instead of the 258 billion shillings requested by the county governments through the senate. President Kenyatta termed the bill as ‘time barred’, and cited that not signing the bill would have led to a ‘lengthy complication’ for the budget preparation process. However, skeptics see the signing of the bill as an indication that the Kenyatta administration is not intent on implementing full devolution.

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