Author: NLM Correspondent

After approval of the Tullow sale to Total, the government and joint venture partners in the Lake Albert Development Project are now working on pending issues to meet the December target for Final Investment Decision (FID). Coming a month after Uganda and Total initialled the Host Government Agreement (HGA) for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), this puts pressure on the joint venture partners to finalise several unresolved issues in two months before FID. The joint venture partners in the Lake Albert Development Project are French major Total and China National Offshore Oil Corporation. “There remains some work to…

By Lise Rakner There is a trend of democratic retrenchment across the African continent. Despite democratic gains in some states, the overall tendency over the past decade has been the erosion of democratic gains won in the period after 1990. Democracy is challenged in ways that pose threats to freedom of speech, association and information, the ability to choose political leaders, rule of law with recourse to independent courts, protection of personal integrity and private life. African states have adopted legal restrictions on key civil and political rights that form the basis of democratic rule in many countries from dominant…

We are living through history. Thousands of Kenyans are on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, as critical workers and caregivers, as entrepreneurs and workers trying to turn around our fortunes, and as partakers in the dizzying roller coaster that is 2020. Because and in spite of the global pandemic we are powering through, it is a fitting ode to resilience and human character. COVID-19, at best, has slowed down our pace of life in practically every aspect, illustrating the uncertainty of life. At its worst, it has killed over a million people globally in the space of months, more…

By David Onjili The year 2005 is synonymous with Hurricane Katrina. It ravaged the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and specifically New Orleans killing 1200 people and destroying property worth some $125 billion. It is also the year that YouTube was founded. Fifteen years down the line, YouTube has revolutionized how we watch videos and created jobs for many. So how does YouTube and especially its algorithm work? The YouTube algorithm is described by Tech Review magazine as both the programming code and hardware behind YouTube’s ranking system. Its purpose is to filter the billions of videos on the platform…

Customer centricity is not merely a catchy corporate buzzword for the modern business. In fact, the notion is evidenced as far back as the 16th century, when King Louis XIV is quoted as saying, “Everything starts with the customer”. If by this we assume that everything ends with the customer too, then we need to optimise every step of the customer journey as they travel with your brand. To be truly customer centric, a company first needs to deliberately place the customer at the centre of their business by being aware of every customer touchpoint going into and out of…

By Sabine Taillardat The COVID-19 crisis has profoundly impacted the global air transport industry and airline passenger experience alike. This means that as passenger demand makes a gradual return, albeit cautiously amid inflight safety concerns, there is a new set of post-COVID-19 measures in tow for airlines. While containing costs is a key focus for airlines to achieve a sustainable recovery, carriers also face ongoing challenges in reinforcing health, safety and confidence onboard; complying with sanitisation rules; and ensuring passenger satisfaction. Demand for onboard high-speed connectivity was already accelerating pre-COVID-19, but now, the right inflight connectivity (IFC) solution can bring a…

By Billy Owino The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across Africa has seen a surge in digital payments and e-commerce transactions as financial institutions scramble to offer businesses and consumers contactless ways of spending, borrowing and lending, and making payments. Cashless solutions like mobile lending and digital payments were already growing rapidly on the continent even before the pandemic struck. Now, we could see a scenario where the effects of COVID-19 on our society will create permanent changes in the way we use digital payments, cards and cash, creating both opportunities and challenges for financial institutions. Even in 2020, millions…

About 21.7 million Nigerians are unemployed—it’s a figure that is higher than the population in 35 of Africa’s 54 countries. That number will likely rise given Nigeria has also just suffered its worst quarterly economic contraction in over a decade due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The lingering slump in the global oil trade has proven particularly costly, and dashes any hopes of a quick economic turnaround. To its credit, Nigeria’s government has pushed social intervention programs amid pandemic, from cash relief for its poor to a $126 million credit facility for small and medium businesses. But so far, those plans…

By Simon Roberts and Jason Bell The COVID-19 pandemic and consequent lockdown measures have had a huge negative impact on producers and consumers. Food production has been disrupted, and incomes have been lost. But a far more devastating welfare consequence of the pandemic could be reduced access to food. A potential rise in food insecurity is a key policy point for many countries. The World Economic Forum has stated this pandemic is set to “radically exacerbate food insecurity in Africa”. This, and other supplier shocks, such as locust swarms in East Africa, have made many African economies more dependent on…

Military officers overthrew Mali’s government in a coup d’état in August 2020. Among the more worrying aspects of the coup is the fact that a number of the officers involved had received foreign training, most notably the US. In fact, this was the second time in eight years that US-trained officers in Mali had launched a coup. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one civilian government to a coup launched by foreign-trained officers is a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. But does US foreign military training provoke coups d’état? The short answer is we don’t know. Until we…