Author: NLM Editor

By Livia Yap If emerging markets are the wild child of the investment family, offering potentially higher rewards in return for greater risk, then what about their smaller sibling, frontier markets? These include countries such as Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan and Nigeria, where stock exchanges and currency markets are too small or underdeveloped to be classified as emerging markets. While frontier markets may bring investors more exotic thrills, and spills, they also somewhat counterintuitively can be a safe haven when markets are rocky. What are frontier markets? In the investing hierarchy, they are the bottom rung of three. At the top…

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NLM Writer Although the Government of Kenya (B2 stable) faces intensifying liquidity pressures, its fiscal consolidation efforts and Eurobond issuance should allow it to manage these challenges, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report last month. A reported rise in the Kenyan government’s arrears to domestic goods and service providers has started to weigh on business sentiment and has had an impact on domestic manufacturers. At the same time, nonperforming loans (NPLs) at Kenyan banks have risen in recent years, a trend which can be indicative of accumulated arrears by the government to domestic suppliers. “Domestic liquidity pressures in Kenya…

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By NLM Writer Google made a whopping $4.7 billion from the work of journalists last year via search and Google News, taking a huge cut from the online ad revenue of media houses which lost a crucial source of income, resulting in many of them getting shrunk or closed. News is a significant part of Google’s business, according to a study released last month by the News Media Alliance (NMA), which represents more than 2,000 newspapers across the US. The journalists who create that content deserve a cut of that $4.7 billion, president and chief executive of the NMA David…

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The rise of decentralised renewable energy as a solution to electrification rates across Africa—the slowest growing globally—is also bringing with it a solution to high unemployment. As start-ups in the space continue to prove the viability of their services as alternatives to traditional power grids, they’re starting to create direct jobs at a scale that’s already comparable to local utilities. A “job census” report of the renewable energy sector shows the sector’s workforce—in terms of direct, formal jobs—is already comparable to traditional power grids and utilities in Nigeria and Kenya (the report’s analysis also included India and reflected similar impact).…

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There has been plenty of excitement around Jumia, the e-commerce company which became something of a flawed Rorschach test for how one defines African start-ups. The debate around Jumia came to a head in the run-up to its largely successful initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. It was “Africa’s Amazon” in many headlines in international press trying to get their readers to quickly understand why this retailer was worth reading about. E-commerce is often discussed in the context of consumers and customer satisfaction but for many investors and analysts most of their focus is spent looking under…

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NLM Writer Per the World Bank Doing Business Indicators 2019, Kenya rose from position 80 to 61, in ease of doing business rankings. Amongst the indicators were resolving insolvency, protecting minority investors and registering property. The business environment has been on the upward trend after experiencing a decline for the last several years. At the same time, the country has been facing infrastructure constraints. According to the World Bank, Kenya faces a significant infrastructure financing deficit estimated at Sh218 billion annually or roughly half of the required expenditure of almost Sh416 billion (4.5 percent of GDP) per year. But, despite…

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We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. BY Antony Mutunga Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, finally signed onto the AfCFTA – the continent’s most promising attempt yet at a continental free trade area – after months of holding off. To also sign on the day was Benin, leaving Eritrea as the sole country yet to come on board. It’s obvious why Nigeria’s participation and endorsement is significant. It’s not just Africa’s most populous country with some 200 million people; it’s also the continent’s largest economy, with a GDP of more than USD 405bn.…

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Africa’s economic outlook is on the up, with the African Development Bank in its 2019 African Economic Outlook report forecasting sustained rise in the average GDP (gross domestic profit) growth rate for the continent – from an estimated 3.5 percent in 2018 to 4 percent this year and 4.1 percent in 2020. Growth in investment is one of the major factors contributing to this, with private equity (PE) investors letting the money do the talking and PE funding for African businesses having increased from 2017 to 2018, by around U$300 million (Sh36 billion). East African Perspective Over the course of…

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Justice Maraga was appointed to the Supreme Court Bench in 2016. He was viewed as a “safe pair of hands” after an “activist” Willy Mutunga, who had introduced radical changes to the Judiciary much to the chagrin of the Executive. His judicial philosophy could not be discerned easily from his past judgments but on first instance, began by a dress down of judges in Naivasha in 2016 for “issuing injunctions on the Executive” thus forestalling government projects and. This, and the reintroduction of colonial-era robes, put off most.  He has, however, grown into his role as the President of the…

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By Dennis Ndiritu The Constitution of Kenya was enacted in 2010. It has been termed as a transformative constitution because its architecture and design is meant to address historically ignored wrongs. Walter Khobe in his article, ‘Reflections on five years of Transformative Constitutionalism in Kenya: Chimerical or viable?’ notes that the present Constitution was developed with a historical and social background, to address the authoritarian regime of law epitomised by human rights abuses, social exclusion, unequal power relations and arbitral dispossession of property among other numerous wrongs. It doing so, it established institutions meant to assist in this agenda. Such…

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