Year 9 | Edition 32 | 26 August 2022
 
The African Business Roundtable welcomes new members to its organization

Individuals and businesses join the African Business Roundtable for numerous reasons, and the organization’s objectives have been carefully designed to serve them. Today the ABR represents companies of all sizes, and its members include businesses across every sector of the economy, chambers, business associations, and private sector organizations.

The African Business Roundtable’s key activities include trade and investment missions, economic summits, research, business information and communication, policy commission, advocacy functions, general meetings, trainings and...

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Nigeria secures $3 billion towards implementation of its net-zero by 2060 ambition

The Federal Government of Nigeria has demonstrated its commitment to a clean and sustainable future with the global launch of the country’s Energy Transition Plan.

At the launch event, hosted by His Excellency, The Vice President of Nigeria Prof. Yemi Osinbajo SAN, announcements amounting to about $3 billion were made in support of this plan by The World Bank and by US Exim Bank through Sun Africa. “We plan to commit over $1.5 billion towards the Energy Transition Plan on renewable energy, on power sector...

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Shelter Afrique appoints Thierno-Habib Hann as new CEO

Nairobi-based pan African housing development financier Shelter Afrique has appointed Thierno-Habib Hann as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to succeed Andrew Chimphondah who left the company early this year.

Hann currently serves as the Asia/Pacific Lead for housing finance at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), based in Bangkok, where he leads the strategy development and implementation of the housing finance program with a portfolio of over $2 billion. He previously held a similar...

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ISUZU Motors South Africa eyes African expansion with new center

ISUZU Motors South Africa (IMSAf) has confirmed Gauteng as the province of choice to house its very own Parts Distribution Centre (PDC). This strategic step will bring the ISUZU's PDC and training centre closer to its biggest regional market and the rest of Africa markets.

Komane Pitso, Senior Vice President for Commercial Operations says, "This centre will allow us to be closer to the markets we serve on the continent and be better positioned to service our customers nationally with quick turn-around...

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AT&T Senior Director Cynthia Karuri-Kropac appointed Safaricom's new enterprise manager

Safaricom on Wednesday announced the appointment of Cynthia Karuri-Kropac as its Chief Enterprise Business Officer effective 1st September 2022.

Cynthia takes over from Kris Senanu who left the company in June 2022. Kris joined Safaricom in June 2021 from Telkom Kenya where he served as the Managing Director in the Digital Service Delivery Unit. During his time at Safaricom. Following this, Safaricom named Joseph Wanjohi as the acting as the interim Chief Enterprise Business Officer from 1st June 2022...

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TDB, Mirova SunFunder and FMO extend $50m to d.light to finance solar energy solutions across Africa

The Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (TDB), along with a consortium of lenders including Mirova SunFunder and FMO, have extended a $50 million loan facility to d.light, to finance solar energy solutions across Africa.

d.light is a provider and manufacturer of clean energy products supporting the development of renewable energy spaces. Mirova SunFunder and TDB were co-mandated lead arrangers (co-MLAs) on the facility. This facility will enable...

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Amsterdam Internet Exchange and MainData Nigeria sign agreement to launch neutral internet exchange services in Lagos

Amsterdam Internet Exchange, AMS-IX, one of the largest Internet Exchange operators in the world, and MainData Nigeria Limited (MDXi), an Equinix company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to operate and grow Internet Exchange services in Africa.

AMS-IX will be setting up an internet exchange at MDXi, the carrier-neutral Data Center of MainOne in Lagos Nigeria. MDXi will act as AMS-IX strategic partner and reseller for AMS-IX in West Africa. This strategic partnership between AMS-IX and...

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Kenya Association of Manufacturers appoints Anthony Mwangi as new CEO

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) Board has appointed Mr. Anthony Mwangi as the Chief Executive Officer, effective 15th September 2022.

With over 20 years of work experience, Mr Mwangi brings on board a wealth of expertise in public policy, government relations, stakeholder engagement, communications and business development cutting across the Transportation, ICT, Aviation, and Oil and Gas industries. He has previously worked at Bolt, Tullow Oil, IBM and Kenya Airways in various...

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[South Africa] 1nvest lists emerging Asian markets ETF on the JSE

Shares in the 1nvest MSCI Emerging Markets Asia Index Feeder ETF began trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), giving South African investors exposure and access to eight fast-growing Asian emerging markets. 

This emerging market-focused Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), which is managed by specialist index asset manager 1nvest, has been designed to track the performance of the MSCI Emerging Markets Asia Index. The index is made up of more than 1,100 large and mid-cap companies operating in China...

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Donors launch initiative to transform agricultural interventions in Africa

Endowed with a budget of $19.6 million until 2025, the African Agricultural Transformation Initiative (AATI), has been launched to improve sustainable development in Africa by bridging the gap between the formulation of strategic agricultural initiatives and their successful implementation at local level.

This initiative is born as a result of the close collaboration among AGRA, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting...

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Microsoft appoints Phyllis Migwi new Country Manager for Kenya

Microsoft has announced the appointment of Phyllis Migwi as the new country manager. She takes over from Kendi Ntwiga who left the company for Meta, Facebook’s parent company. Migwi has had a profound career as a leader in tech with experience spanning more than 14 years.

She joins Microsoft from IBM where she worked for 12 years in various faculties. In her most recent engagement, she was the Regional Hybrid Cloud & AI Leader-Africa Growth Market. Besides her rich portfolio in ICT, she has various positions in...

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[Kenya] Sasini to start using drones for fertilizer application and chemical spraying on its Kipkebe tea farm

Fahari Aviation, a subsidiary of Kenya Airways PLC has signed a service agreement with Kipkebe Ltd, which is a subsidiary of Sasini PLC, to offer precision agricultural services.

Fahari Aviation will use drone technology on the farm to offer agricultural services such as fertilizer application and chemical spraying on the tea farm. Kipkebe farm will be used to benchmark the effectiveness of drone use with a possibility to expand the services offering to other Sasini estates. Fahari Aviation will deploy high capacity drones to cover over 3000...

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[Kenya] Nokia and Safaricom complete Africa’s first Fixed Wireless Access 5G slicing trial

Nokia today announced that it has successfully piloted its 4G and 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) network slicing with mobile operator, Safaricom on its live commercial network. This is the first-time 4G/5G network slicing has been successfully achieved in Africa. 

The trial utilized a multi-vendor network environment and included RAN, transport and core as well as software upgrades to a range of Nokia’s products and services. The successful trial demonstrates that Safaricom is now poised to support...

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[Nigeria] MTN has rolled out 5G trials across seven cities

MTN Nigeria has launched 5G network in 190 sites across seven cities in the country. This initial installation of the high-speed network was launched in the cities of  Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Kano, Owerri, and Maiduguri.

Nigeria is the third African country to install 5G network after South Africa and Kenya. South Africa initiated its plans for 5G network in 2019 through mobile operator Rain, while Kenya’s Safaricom kicked off the journey to 5G network in March 2021, although it has not gone commercial yet. Other...

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Incentro Africa bags Best Cloud Computing Solutions Provider award 2022 at DigitalTech 100

Incentro Africa has been awarded Best Cloud Computing Solutions Provider, 2022 by DigitalTech 100. The DigitalTech 100 awards recognize corporates from across the country that are providing digital tech-based solutions.

Incentro Africa has been providing cloud solutions to the African continent since 2017. With clients in over 29 countries and providing services and support in 3 international languages, Incentro Africa is steaming ahead on its mission to be the #1 Google Premier Partner in the region...

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[Interview] N. Justin Chinyanta, Chairman and CEO, Loita Group

A Zambian national residing in Johannesburg, South Africa, N. Justin Chinyanta is the founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Loita Holdings Corporation. 

Mr. Chinyanta is a specialist and an expert in the financial markets of Sub-Sahara Africa, with over twenty years of professional experience in commercial and investment banking in the region complemented by an extensive network of senior level African private business, donor and government contacts. He has played a leading role in developing African...

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[Interview] AI Kelly, Chairman and CEO, Visa

AI Kelly is the Chairman and CEO of the global payments firm Visa. He joined Visa in October 2016 as Chief Executive Officer and was elected Chairman of the Board in April 2019. Prior to Visa, Mr. Kelly was President and Chief Executive Officer at Intersection, a technology and digital media company which is an Alphabet-backed private company based in New York City.

How do you see Africa’s role in the global economy, and how important is the continent to Visa? 

Africa is home to both the world’s youngest population and six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies—two factors that will have an increasingly transformative effect on the...

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[Vacancy] Incentro is looking for a DevOps Engineer in Nairobi

Building functional systems that improve customer experience? Love for deploying product updates, identifying production issues and implementing integrations that meet our customers' needs? And doing this at the #1 Google Premier partner of East-Africa?

About you

  • BSc in Computer Science, Engineering or relevant field
  • Experience as a DevOps Engineer or similar software engineering role
  • Proficiency with code repository management (git/bitbucket), code merge, quality checks, continuous integration, and automated deployment/management...

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[Vacancy] Incentro is looking for a Data Engineer in Nairobi

Able to see logic in a pile of information or create solutions for problems people never knew existed? And doing this at the #1 Google Premier partner of East-Africa?

About you

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 3 years of industry experience in software development, data engineering, business intelligence, data science, or related field with experience in manipulating, processing, and extracting value from datasets...

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[UNICAF] Scholarship Opportunities

Unicaf is an online and blended learning higher education platform that is dedicated to making higher education of international standard accessible, by offering scholarship opportunities to professionals and young school leavers.

What are scholarship opportunities?

A scholarship could be defined as financial aid that relieves the burden of tuition fees and living costs that students and families have to pay to secure a place in secondary and tertiary education. Considering the rising costs of student expenses and debts, we could nowadays describe education...

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The Africa Trade Expo (TATE) | Virtual Conference and Trade Show | 9 March 2022 - 9 March 2023

The Africa Trade Expo (TATE) presents direct access to African buyers whose main aim is to source the latest products, establish partnerships, and conclude import/export deals. TATE is an ongoing virtual trade show for African businesses to network, collaborate, and enter into partnerships with international manufacturers and exporters. Present your new opportunities, network, build relationships and grow your business in African markets...

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Future Foods | African Food & Beverage Industries Virtual Conference & Trade Show | 9 March 2022 - 9 March 2023

Future Foods is a virtual meeting place for importers, F&B managers, retail category buyers, owner-operators, agents, and distributors from across Africa’s diverse and booming market to come to conferences, to network, meet exhibitors, source products, new ingredients, retail shelf-ready products, and the latest processing, packaging, and logistics solutions. Future Foods connects attendees exhibitors across the...

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[Column] Patrick Ndegwa: Will the updated National Digital Masterplan accelerate digital transformation in Kenya?

In April 2022, Kenya’s Ministry of ICT, Innovation and Youth Affairs marked a significant step in the country’s journey towards digital transformation with the release of the country’s revised National Digital Masterplan at the annual Connected Summit in Diani.

The plan places technology at the heart of the national economy. It lays out ambitious targets over the next 10 years with regards to the rollout of ICT infrastructure and the creation of new employment and business opportunities...

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Tech trends: What the rest of 2022 has in store for the industry

Since the beginning of 2022, several trends have emerged as newsworthy front-runners.

CTO Wayne Yan and architect Saša Slankamenac at South African specialised software development firm Dariel, take a closer look at Web3, passwordless authentication, artificial intelligence and machine learning as three trends likely to make the biggest impact in the coming months...

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[Column] Mike Smollan: South African retail trends for 2022 and beyond

Gears switched at the beginning of 2022 as we entered a new phase in a retail eco-system that was still massaging aches and pains and playing catch up with new consumer behavioural patterns evolving as - ‘new ways of doing things’, ‘adaptability’ and ‘having an evolving mindset’, became the rallying cry.

What lies beyond in this ever-changing landscape as we look to the now and beyond – sees physical stores becoming critical touchpoints; how some pandemic shopping behaviours are here to stay; consumers turning to less traditional shopping...

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[Column] Marlene Mutimawase: The marketing language you should know!

The mobile industry in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to play a crucial role especially in marketing and communication. There is a significant increase in user in the next 5 years.

The research conducted by GSMA indicated that 615M people in Sub-Saharan Africa will subscribe to mobile services by 2025, equivalent to 50% of the region’s population. $155 BN of economic value added will be generated by mobile technologies and services by 2025. In 2020, transactions on mobile money platforms reached $490 billion. This explains...

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[Column] Nixon Kanali: Just how slow is 5G adoption in Africa?

5G deployment across Africa has been very slow despite telecom operators around the world having rolled out the network since 2019. As of May this year, only 6 African countries had rolled out the 5th generation network. And even at that, most of these launches are not even commercial. 

Some of these countries include South Africa and Kenya among others. South Africa initiated its plans for 5G network in 2019 through mobile operator Rain, while Kenya’s Safaricom kicked off the journey to this network in March 2021...

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News Headlines

28-03-2024 | 13:03:44
Unilever accelerates Growth Action Plan by launching productivity programme
Unilever has announced steps to accelerate its Growth Action Plan (GAP) through the separation of Ice Cream and the launch of a major productivity programme.


27-03-2024 | 14:51:22
JW Marriott unveils second property in Kenya
Standing as the tallest hotel in the country with 35 stories in the Westlands commercial district, JW Marriott Hotel Nairobi captures the essence of Kenya’s natural beauty and heritage.


27-03-2024 | 13:22:16
Uganda set to join Single African Air Transport Market
So far, only fourteen countries out of 29 that belong to the Eastern Africa, Southern Africa and Indian Ocean Community (IOC) have acceded to the Single African Air Transport Market, six years since it was launched.


27-03-2024 | 13:19:37
German manufacturer Karcher invests €3 million in the Kenyan market
This investment was made to operationalize the business into a full subsidiary, which includes a regional distribution center at the Freight Forwarders Solutions warehouse, Tatu City, the 5,000-acre mixed-use Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on Nairobi's doorstep, positioning Kenya as a hub for East Africa.


27-03-2024 | 13:13:32
Nissan Africa announces regional appointments 
Jordi Vila, currently Nissan Divisional Vice President Marketing and Sales Europe has been appointed as President Nissan Africa, as DVP.


26-03-2024 | 14:56:32
Radisson Hotel Group targets to have 25 hotels in Morocco by 2030
As Morocco continues to be a crucial market for development, the Group is accelerating its expansion in the country and has therefore extended the portfolio of Erwan Garnier, Senior Director for Development, to include Morocco.


22-03-2024 | 13:48:59
Kenya Airways and Virgin Atlantic announce new codeshare agreement
The first phase of the agreement will allow customers booking through Virgin Atlantic to directly purchase flights on Kenya Airways’ Heathrow to Nairobi service.  


22-03-2024 | 10:43:33
Mark-Anthony Johnson: Is Africa splitting in two?
Mark-Anthony Johnson: Is Africa splitting in two?


22-03-2024 | 10:18:00
Africa’s vibrant and sustainable creations
In many African communities, creativity knows no bounds. A unique and fascinating trend has emerged, where individuals repurpose flip-flops into remarkable crafts.


21-03-2024 | 07:58:00
Nissan Navara to fly the flag up through Africa in daring expedition
Dubbed Nissan Daring Africa 2024, the expedition will visit Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya before ending in Egypt.


20-03-2024 | 14:38:00
[Column] Anthony Mwangi: Road towards gainful employment in Kenya: The Dual TVET approach
The evolving employment landscape demands a fresh perspective, one that champions the pragmatic alternative of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).


20-03-2024 | 13:25:30
 TradeMark Africa launches Ghana Country Programme Oversight Committee
The Committee will play a critical role in overseeing trade and customs development programs designed to enhance trade growth and competitiveness not only within Ghana, but also along the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor.


20-03-2024 | 09:53:00
[Webinar] Complimentary expert session for Telecom leaders and Startups in Africa, March 21
Designed for telecom leaders and startups, thia event offers invaluable strategies for expanding services, managing FX risks, enhancing cross-border payments, and establishing credibility in the international arena.


19-03-2024 | 15:00:43
Xsolla unveils new payment methods for gamers in Africa
This move addresses the unique financial landscape of Africa, where a significant portion of the population, particularly in regions like Ghana and Uganda, remains unbanked.


18-03-2024 | 11:12:30
[Column] Hassan Egeh: Somalia's battle with climate change effect
Climate change has significant effects on Somalia, impacting various aspects of the country. Droughts and water scarcity have become more severe, leading to a loss of vegetation and livestock deaths. This has resulted in food insecurity, with crop failures and reduced agricultural productivity.


 


 
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