Facebook King has Kenya on his Mind!!

Mark Zuckerberg has joined hands with Airtel to extend the Internet.org app to its prepaid and post-paid customers in Kenya. Facebook's Internet.org app delivers a set of locally relevant basic internet services free of charge in order to make it more comfortable for people to access the internet.

In his Facebook post, Zuckerberg wrote, "Today Internet. org reached a special milestone. With our announcement in Kenya this morning, free basic internet services will soon be available to more than 100 million people worldwide.

 We still have a lot of work ahead to make Internet.org available everywhere and to help 5 billion people connect and use the internet, but our recent launches in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia are a good start. Kenya already has a thriving startup ecosystem and the internet is already making a big impact, with millions of people using services like mobile banking over SMS. To fulfill this country's full potential, we need to help everyone connect." At the launch, Airtel Kenya CEO Adil El Youssefi said, "This partnership responds to the needs of our youthful customers who are in constant need to access the internet and keep in touch with events and activities at all times"

The strategy is a grounding of the nation’s determined Vision 2030 program, which “aims to transform Kenya into a newly industrializing, middle-income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens,” by 2030, by concentrating on economic, social and political reforms.

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India-Africa: Investing In The Future

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) organized a Conference, “India-Africa: Investing In The Future”, on 25th November, 2014 at New Delhi. The Conference was attended by the Ambassadors, High Commissioners and diplomats from 20 African Missions situated in New Delhi. Other delegation were Government Officials and top executives from the Indian Companies having interest in Africa.

In the Inaugural Session of the Conference the key Speakers were: H. E. Ms. Gennet Zewide, Dean of African Missions in India and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia; Shri. D S Dhesi, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, Govt. of India; Ambassador V.B. Soni, Chairman, Overseas Infrastructure Alliance; Mr. Richard Fenning, Global CEO, Control Risks ; Mr. Harsh Shrivastava, Senior Vice President & Head-Corporate Affairs, SREI International Finance Ltd.; Ms. Preeti Sinha, Senior President and Global Convenor, Yes Institute, Yes Bank and Mr. D S Rawat, Secretary General, Assocham.

Ministry of commerce will materialize the PDC (Project Development Company) by the end of this year to identify projects and take them up in a fast-track manner with active involvement of the governments of those countries, said D.S. Dheshi, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce.

He further added, “The proposal is to set up a PDC (Project Development Company) with leading financial institutions of India led by EXIM bank, IL&FS and State Bank of India (SBI), in the partnership with the African Development Bank (ADB), which will identify projects and take them up in a fast track manner with the active involvement of the government of those countries and business entities of Indian sites”

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H.E. Ms Gennet Zewide, Dean of African Mission in India and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia said, “there is an unexplored investment opportunity in Africa, it has 50% of the world’s gold, 90% of the cobalt, 40% of the world’s potential hydroelectric power, 65% of the manganese, and millions of acres of untilled farmland, as well as other natural resources. The continent also has large reserves of oil. However, the main driving force for the development and growth are not these resources but African government’s investment in educating its large pool of young workforce, investing in infrastructure and the health of its people”.

Ms. Zewide further said, Africa’s investment and business appeal is an opportunity for prospective business in India and elsewhere. Africa took a significant political and policy measure by establishing regional markets such as COMESA, SADC and ECOWAS etc. which foster trade and investment relation amongst member countries by removing tariff and other trade barriers.

In order to grow further and realize our vision of reaching the level of a middle income economy as of 2020-23, a five year growth and transformation plan has been formulated in which agriculture, agro processing and manufacturing sector such as textile, leather and chemical industries are given priority.

In order, to facilitate investment in the manufacturing sector the government is also setting up a industrial zone, added Ms Gennet Zewide.

Ambassador V.B. Soni, Chairman, Overseas Infrastructure Alliance said, on the trade front from a level of $ 25billion in 2005- 06, India’s bilateral trade with Africa increased to US $ 67 billion in 2011- 12. This is likely to touch to $100 billion mark in the next few years.

Other speakers also shared with the Indian businesses the opportunities present in Africa. The first session also had an Interaction Round which gave the opportunity to the Indian investors to share their queries and issues, which were addressed by the panel. This address is followed by delivering “Vote of Thanks” by Shri. D S Rawat, Secretary General, Assocham in which he thanked all the speakers on the dais to make this Conference a successful program by giving their valuable inputs.

During the next session “Africa: Explore the Unexplored”, the Ambassadors/High Commissioners and other diplomats from the African Missions gave the presentations/ speeches and shown some trade promotional videos of their respective countries. The theme of the session was to highlight the investment opportunities exist in their countries.

After the presentations and networking lunch there were B2B meetings, for which ASSOCHAM had allocated a separate country table for every African country present in the conference, wherein the investors met the African country officials to discuss the business prospects and solved their queries.

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Banks urged to bring systems up to standard

Banks in the country have been urged to bring their systems and infrastructure up to the standard of what pertains in other parts of the world. That, when done, is expected to help them boost their competitiveness while serving their customers in real time through improved operational efficiency.

The Managing Director of Subah Infosolutions, Mr Birendra Sasmal, made the call in an interview with the Daily Graphic after the company had made a presentation on its new tailor-made product for the banks at the 13th Ghana Banking Awards in Accra. The new product, “Xelerate”, he said, was a dynamic/robust revenue management solution to help improve the operations of banks in the country.

 The product, he said, was expected to address an array of offerings for banks which sought to inject more efficiency and profitability in their business while becoming customer-centric.

Making a presentation to the banks at the justended Ghana Banking Awards in Accra, Mr Sasmal said the product was built on a technology agnostic platform with no dependency on the type of database, web server, operating system used.

“Xelerate is also built on top of a robust and highly scalable platform; it has comprehensive, yet cost-effective solutions to satisfy all the revenue management and business assurance objectives,” he added. Mr Sasmal said the product would provide event-driven serviceoriented architecture to facilitate integration and flexibility while maintaining high availability and load balancing.

“Xelerate offers graphical, rule-driven administration of the core transaction engine to provide business-driven configurability of business process flows,” he added.

Pointing out some of the benefits of the product, he said it helped ensure operational efficiency as it could guarantee real-time convergent charging and billing platform for all services and ensure centralised and automated services while improving audit compliance.

He said it could also improve relationship through relationshipbased pricing and complete customer view across information silos, among other things.

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Stratcomm Boss Esther Cobbah Is PR Personality for the Year 2013

Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Communications Africa (Stratcomm Africa), Ms. Esther A.N. Cobbah, was recognized by the Institute of Public Relations Ghana as the Public Relations (PR) Personality of the Year 2013.

This award was conferred at the Institute’s Excellence Awards held on Friday 21st November, 2014 at the Banquet Hall, Accra.

Stratcomm Africa was also recognized as the Public Relations Consultancy of the Year 2013. In addition, two clients of the company, AngloGold Ashanti and Ghana Electrometer were recognized as PR organization of the Year, Extractive Industry and PR organization of the Year Manufacturing.

Speaking on behalf of all the award winners, Ms. Cobbah thanked the Institute for the recognition that had been accorded to them and added that these awards would spur them on to live up to the honour that had been done to them

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Russia Seeks To Raise Its Profile in Africa

President Vladimir Putin received the letters of credence of 15 new foreign ambassadors to Russia in a ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace’s Alexander Hall on November 19 in Moscow.

Putin received letters of credence from the new ambassadors of Djibouti, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Poland, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ghana, Vietnam, the United States of America, Zambia, Turkey, Tanzania, Hungary, Peru, Nicaragua and Uzbekistan.

In particular, Putin noted that Russia was interested in developing ties with the Republic of Djibouti and is open to cooperation in international affairs and building up contacts in economic and other areas in the interest of strengthening peace and stability on the Horn of Africa.

He said that Russia valued friendly relations with the Central African Republic. “Together with the international community we will continue to assist the transitional government’s efforts to reach political and inter-faith harmony and normalize the difficult humanitarian situation,” he pointed out in his speech.

With regards to Eritrea, he said: “we are building up our relations with Eritrea. We share similar approaches towards current issues on the international and regional agendas and seek to develop our trade and economic ties.”

Zambia is always on the economic agenda. Russia marked the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations with the Republic of Zambia. The president said that Russia would seek to continue developing bilateral cooperation, including our traditional assistance in training professionals for your country and will continue to coordinate positions on the regional and international agenda.

Russia wants to develop traditionally friendly ties with Tanzania, strengthen cooperation on the international stage, and expand trade and economic relations. Russia welcomes Tanzania’s active role in resolving the African continent’s problems.

Russian authorities pledged to help and offer necessary assistance and from that of ministries, agencies and the broader Russian civic society and business community to all foreign embassies in pursuit of their assignment in the Russian Federation.

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Rwanda, Sweden sign Rwf9.3bn grant to tackle unemployment

The government signed a grant agreement of $13.5 million (about Rwf9.3 billion) to support implementation of the National Employment Programme which aims to create 200,000 jobs each year.

The Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Claver Gatete, signed on behalf of government, while Maria Håkansson, Chargé d’Affaires at the Swedish Embassy in Kigali, represented her government. The funds will be used through 2017, to support projects aimed at creating sufficient jobs, equipping the workforce with vital skills needed by the private sector, and strengthening national employment structures.

“The National Employment Programme is the government flagship programme for fulfilling the ambitions of the EDPRS II with regards to productive employment,’’ Gatete said.

“Creating jobs is important but it is not the end in itself. Employment needs to be sufficiently productive to provide a sustainable source of income. We recognise that the youth make up 67 per cent of the unemployed in Rwanda. Therefore, our target also focuses on youth entrepreneurship and skills development.”

Sweden is a new member of the Private Sector Development and Youth Employment Sector Working Group and has been the first to donate toward the National Employment Program (NEP).

“We see the funding of NEP as a way to support the government’s work on promoting productive jobs that provide people living in poverty, a sustainable way to self-reliance,” Håkansson said.

“The programme’s approach fits into Vision 2020, and also with the priorities that emerged from the analytic work carried out by the Swedish Embassy earlier this year which indicated that moving towards productive off-farm jobs is needed to reach the ambitious targets for poverty reduction.”

Also, people living in poverty across the country will need to be facilitated to grasp the job opportunities or become job creators themselves.

During this period, the programme will seek to promote entrepreneurship and SME growth.

Rwanda’s unemployment rate, according to the 2012 national census stands at 3.4 percent, up from 1.2 per cent in 2006.

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Max International launched in Ghana

Max International an industry leader in the production of wellness and weight-loss supplements and products has officially launched its operations in Africa through the opening of the Ghana office.

Max International has its purpose, to empower people around the world to experience better health, success and significance. The company also offers more passion, inspiration, stability and community according to its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Joe Voyticky. He remarked, At Max International, people can make more than money. “We provide three primary benefits – a chance to improve health, enhance your wealth and achieve more through personal development “.

Mr. Joe Voyticky said Max International is committed to providing all of its associates with the resources they need to build a successful business. He also revealed that, the company has created several sales and educational materials custom designed for Associates of all levels of experience who will spearhead the company’s dreams across the globe.

Mr. Voyticky further explained that the company offers Nutrition that is not Available in Africa or Ghana until now, and that they are “doing massive expansion into Africa and you can be the one that overrides this growth and earn fortunes helping us to expand our business.”

He emphasized “We will together build a foundation that will last. We are not in Ghana to exploit the people, or make some money and live, we are here to grow with you and to live and carry people by helping them live their dreams,” he said.

Some of the company’s product include Max One, Max N Fuze, Cellgevity, MaxGXL among others, which have the potency of improving mental clarity and focus, removing harmful toxics in the body, strengthening the immune system, providing critical antioxidants to protect the cells, and help the body function at optimal levels by providing essential vitamins and minerals.

The Chief Executive Officer also spoke about the Max training programme which he describe as an innovative system designed along with top field leaders to distil the best business building practices into simple steps and advice that even the newest Associate can use.

He also explained that in addition to Max’s excellent products, there are two trends that make the company a good investment business. The first of these trends, he indicated, was the health and wellness trend that many people are following.

The second international trend, he pointed out, was the consumer need for network marketing businesses. “This need is illustrated by the inadequacies in public health care. Currently, a growing aging population, the rise of chronic illnesses, and massive budget problems are plaguing public health care systems. Prevention of these problems is just as important as treatment, and Max offers products that may help people live better, healthier lives,” he said.

Other African delegations and the USA represented in a large numbers at the official launch included Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso, La Cote D’ivore, and Guinea among others.

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