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Kenyan High Court to rule on shift to new currency

September 23, 2019

On June 1, Central bank announced that it was withdrawing Ksh1,000 ($10) notes from circulation effective October 1 to deal with counterfeits and money laundering.

Last week, the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA), the industry’s lobby, said no banks should now be dispensing the old Ksh1,000 notes because now it’s about receiving them and forwarding them to CBK,”

Did Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) violate the Constitution in including the statue of founding president Jomo Kenyatta on the new generation bank notes?

The answer to this question, and its effect, is at the heart of a case filed by activist Okiya Omtatah and whose verdict is expected from the High Court on September 27.

The ruling will come only days to the expiry of the CBK deadline of September 30th for return of the old Ksh1,000 bank notes that are set to be withdrawn from circulation.

Justice David Maraga of the high court of Kenya

Chief Justice David Maraga appointed judges George Kanyi Kimondo, Anthony Charo Murima and Lady Justice Asenath Nyaboke Ongeri to handle the case.

Mr Omtatah accused the Central Bank of Kenya and its governor Patrick Njoroge of violating Article 231 (4) of the Constitution that prohibits the use of individual portraits in currency notes and coins.

He also argued that the designs of the new generation currency note and coins were not subjected to public participation in line with the requirements of the Kenyan Constitution.

“Notes and coins issued by the Central Bank of Kenya may bear images that depict or symbolise Kenya or an aspect of Kenya but shall not bear the portrait of any individual,” states the Constitution.

According to Mr Omtatah, the Legal Notices used by CBK to legalise the issuance of new generation bank notes — No. 235 of December 7, 2018, No. 72 of May 31, 2019, and the Kenya Gazette Notice No. 4849 of May 31, 2019—are invalid, null and void because they were issued in violation of the Constitution and statutes without being tabled in parliament for scrutiny and approval.

On June 1, Central bank announced that it was withdrawing Ksh1,000 ($10) notes from circulation effective October 1 to deal with counterfeits and money laundering.

Last week, the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA), the industry’s lobby, said no banks should now be dispensing the old Ksh1,000 notes because now it’s about receiving them and forwarding them to CBK,”

However, The EastAfrican has learnt that some lenders are still dispensing old Ksh1,000 notes through their automated teller machines (ATMs)

JAMES ANYANZWA works for The East African

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world

South Africa Is Developing A Law That Will Bar Foreigners From Participating In Certain Businesses

In the wake of xenophobic attacks, South Africa appears to be going a step further in stopping foreigners from carrying out certain types of businesses in the country, a preference that may represent an indirect way of shutting out new influx of migrants to the country.

Here Is All You Need To Know

The new legislation will attempt to bar foreign nationals from operating in certain sectors of the economy, a key member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet revealed this week.
Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola told a fundraising gala dinner hosted by the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation on Thursday night that his small business development counterpart, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, was developing legislation in relation to foreign nationals doing business in South Africa.

“(The minister) is also developing legislation in relation to foreign nationals doing business in our country – which sectors of the economy can they play in and where and how? That is the kind of legislation she is busy with and we are hoping that soon it will be released for public engagement,” Lamola said.

Lamola said the reality was that foreign nationals were needed in certain sectors of the economy for it to grow.

“The legislation will also have to cover and be realistic to such kind of dynamics because we are not going to wake up and have a massive deportation of Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Lesotho nationals,” Lamola said.

“We need to put in place legislation that will be able to set aside and strike a clear balance that will help us to still grow the economy for the benefit of everyone in South Africa, but still be able to say there are sectors that we need to regulate and be clearly stated that no foreign national can run this kind of a business”.

Lamola denied this was protectionism.

“Because South Africa is the most industrialised economy on the continent, we are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of the Africa Free Trade Agreement. We don’t have the luxury of closing our borders altogether.”

Attacks on foreigners broke out in Johannesburg, South Africa late August 2019, which saw the destruction of more than 50 shops and business premises mainly owned by Africans from countries in the rest of the continent. Cars and properties were torched and widespread looting took place. The violence against African nationals may be a reaction to extra competition for jobs and services in Africa’s most-industrialized economy.

SOUTH AFRICA’S DEPORTATION RATES OF FOREIGN NATIONALS, 2014/15

Egyptian Edtech Startup ‘Knowledge Officer’ Wins $500,000 New Grant In The UK

The wave of investment in Egyptian startups this year has been quite remarkable. Knowledge Officer, a London-based edtech startup founded by two Egyptians; Ahmed El-Sharkasy and Ahmed Eshra is the latest to join the train, winning $500,000 (over £400,000) in grant from Innovate UK, United Kingdom’s innovation agency.

Here Is The Deal

The grant called ‘Smart’ according to Innovate UK’s website is for ‘best game-changing or disruptive ideas (from any area of technology) with a view to commercialization.’

Ahmed El-Sharkasy, co-founder and CEO of Knowledge Officer, commenting on the occasion, said:

“The grant will help us scale our ML team in London and support our ambition to help millions of job seekers find the right and proven path to pursue their dream career goals at an affordable price. It’s a huge under-served market and we are here to serve the unserved”

This is a significant amount of money, especially considering the fact that Knowledge Officer’s seed round that it raised in March last year was ~$750,000 (£600,000).
Knowledge Officer in a statement said that they will receive the money after presenting their research and results later this year, to take their platform to the next level.

Why Knowledge Officer Won The Grant

Although Innovate UK says the grant is for the ‘best game-changing or disruptive ideas (from any area of technology) with a view to commercialization,’ Knowledge Officer in a statement noted the grant was awarded based on the significance of the problem Knowledge Officer is working to solve — building the best path-to-employment platform and promoting data-driven learning at scale.

‘‘The Smart grant is awarded to game-changing ideas from business with strong evidence of impact. Knowledge Officer was one of just a few startups selected for the fund from 500 applications,” Knowledge Officer noted in the statement.

It also went ahead to state that winning the grant was further validation of both the problem the startup was looking to solve as well as the approach that it is relying on to execute the problem.

What Knowledge Officer Does

Knowledge Officer which also has an office in Alexandria (Egypt), helps users transition into new careers by analyzing their current skills against their dream career and creating a customized learning path to help them learn the skills needed for the new career of their choice. The six areas that it currently covers include founder, product manager, growth manager, machine learning engineer, marketing specialist, and customer success.

Users are offered curated learning material from around the web that comes with challenges and the option to track one’s progress. The users are required to answer different questions at every stage to advance to the next one and can even compete with their friends on Knowledge Officer.

The platform at different points throughout a user’s learning journey also notifies them when their recently acquired skills match with the relevant jobs on different recruitment platforms.

“In our journey to create the shortest and most efficient path to employment, think [of Knowledge Officer as] Google Maps for learning. We wanted to change the way people perceive learning and transform the overall experience to be based on data and ML. Imagine the impact of a concrete route to take you from your current skill set (Point A) and a transformed, aspirational state (Point B), where you are being offered your dream job.”

Knowledge Officer, according to the statement, has more than 100,000 users now with a few thousand active users on a weekly basis. The startup that offers a premium subscription with extra learning tools to both individuals and businesses aims to reach a stable MRR by the end of 2019 from both B2C and B2B revenue streams.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world

Tanzania and World Health Organisation (WHO) Trade Words Over Ebola Claims

September 22, 2019

The Tanzanian government has hit out at the World Health Organisation (WHO) over claims that the country is failing to provide information on suspected cases of Ebola in Tanzania, which the global health body claim is the risk of hindering the fight against the spread of the virus, which has already killed more than 2,000 people in the region. According to WHO, a suspected case of Ebola was reported in the capital city of Dar es Salaam recently and contacts of this patient, who tested positive for hemorrhagic fever, have been quarantined. The WHO went on to say that aside this suspected patient, two other suspected cases have been reported informally while the health authorities in Tanzania have failed to provide further details on the cases, WHO noted.

Responding, Tanzanian health authorities has assured the world body that contrary to their claims, that there was no Ebola in the country, while refusing a “secondary confirmation test” at a WHO centre, according to the UN Health Organization, even though they reported to WHO that a contact of the patient was sick and hospitalized. The World Health Organisation warned that inspite of these evidence clinical details and results of the investigation, including laboratory tests performed for differential diagnosis of these patients, have not been reported to them. Also because of insufficient information received by WHO, it is unable to carry hypotheses about the possible cause of the disease. WHO further warned that the that the initial patient travelled extensively in Tanzania and the uncertainty and lack of information surrounding these cases, which, if confirmed, would represent the very first Ebola epidemic in the country, meant that the risk was considered very high at the national level.

Since the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo over a year ago which lead to the death of over 2100 people, Eat African countries have been at an alert. It could be recalled that four people were earlier diagnosed as carriers of the virus in Uganda and they subsequently died.

But Tanzania has come out strongly to refute the allegations of harbouring an Ebola case in the country by formally telling the World Health Organisation (WHO), it had conducted investigations on suspicious cases and ruled out the deadly virus. The Ministry of Health of Tanzania has assured the citizenry not to panic as there is no Ebola outbreak in Tanzania.

The WHO announcement came a day after the head of a U.S. government health agency traveled to Tanzania at the direction of America’s health secretary, Alex Azar. Azar criticized Tanzania last week for not sharing information, saying on Monday he was aware of a death in Tanzania and that the government had reported two suspected cases who tested negative for Ebola. He specifically said that the government of Tanzania, however, has not made available the samples or the ability to test the index case of the individual who died, nor has it made available any other information. He called on Tanzania to comply with international obligations to share information and allow independent verification of test results.

But in a swift reaction, the Minister of Health of Tanzania, Ummy Mwalimu insist that the Tanzanian government has investigated two recent cases of unknown illnesses, but they were not Ebola.She however, did not say if the two cases investigated included the death of the woman.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.

Benin Republic Modernising Cotonou Port to be the best in West Africa

Benin Republic has embarked on a major modernization process of the Port Autonome du Cotonou (Cotonou Port) to make it more competitive, efficient and effective in meeting the needs of the 21^st century trade demands and also align with best practices in the sector. With the ongoing modernisation project, the government hopes to build the best seaport in West Africa as Cotonou slowly but consistently becomes West Africa’s transshipment hub. The 300 hectare transit port is in a highly competitive sector and region, especially with the overall growth of trade in West Africa.

Government sources in Cotonou say that the Port of Cotonou contributes more than 60% of GDP and mobilizes more than 90% of domestic resources in the country. As part of efforts to ensure that the running and management of the Port meets global best practices, the government of Benin has entrusted the management of Cotonou Port Authority, the administrative structure to the Port of Antwerp International (PAI) Belgium with the aim of reorganizing and restructuring the administration: computerization of services, dissemination of a code good behavior, staff training among other things.

To this end, the Port of Cotonou has raised the bar on quality control, burnish its image within the global shipping industry, and reduce its waiting times. The country equally wants to take advantage of its geographical position and remains a transit point, especially to the Nigerian giant market of 190 million and Niger which has been loyally using its port. Speaking on the development, Chaibou Attahy from Niger Republic said that there is need for the management of the Port to reduce waiting time, and also reduce the cost of clearing containers because it is still expensive compared to others especially its closest competitor which is the Lome Ports with a turnover of 18.3 percent from its port where it has heavily invested the facilities.

However, a shipping expert said that for the government of Cotonou to modernize the Port, they must dredge it to accommodate larger vesels like those of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tema, Ghana, that can accommodate larger vessels because the basins are deeper and more extensive because the water body in Abidjan is 1,000 ha against 80 in Cotonou, thus the cost of Passage is lower and delays faster. This is basically why the Beninese government is investing about 450 million euros on the ports modernization by 2020. The Managing Director of Cotonou Ports Joris Thys said that the government is bent on making the Cotonou’s autonomous port an innovative, secure and reliable logistics platform for international trade,he added that “we want international handling and logistics companies to come and invest”.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.

Businesses in Benin Republic Agonise Over Border Closure with Nigeria

The impact of the protracted closure of Nigeria’s land borders have started taking its toll on neighbouring countries even as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has implored the Nigerian government to reopen the borders. According to reports, even countries as far flung as Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are feeling the impact as most of the trans- West African trade passes through the Lagos-Dakar Corridor which the unanimous border closure by Nigeria has put to a stop.

Farmers of perishable products in Cotonou Benin Republic

Over the weekend, business owners and farmers in Cotonou Benin Republic have protested to the Beninese government to step into the matter and have a round table discussion with Nigeria on ways to address the concerns that led to the border closure. Reports reaching our Correspondent show that most businesses that depend on cross border trade are shutting down and the worst hit are farmers of perishable products who complain that some of the products that are already in their harvesting season are wasting away because there is no market to push them to. A Farmer who spoke with our Correspondent said that this development means that Nigeria is choked off from supplies until the next harvest by local farmers. Most of the products affected are Tomatoes, Pineapples, Watermelons among others as the Farmer complain that the farm produce are wasting in the fields because customers who normally come from Nigeria to buy them cannot do so as a result of the closure.

Equally affected in Benin Republic is transportation as the routes for cheap smuggled fuel from Nigeria has been cut off. Those who wholly depend on these products for survival are going through difficult times, says Honore Sukku, a business man based in Cotonou. Mr. Sukku said that he has never experienced such a rough patch in living memory as the closure affects virtually every facet of the Beninese economy. He said that even cheap labourers from Benin who frequent Nigeria for various jobs ranging from plumbing, tiling, mason and carpentry. He concluded by warning that if both governments fail to sort out the problems as soon as possible, the impact would be much dire for both countries.

The Nigerian authorities insist that until the Beninese government help in curbing cross border smuggling into Nigeria, the border will remain shut. Sources from the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPPRA) said that with the closure of the borders, there has been a drastic reduction in the quantity of petroleum products the country imports. Also agriculture sources say that more Nigerians now eat Rice grown in the country instead of foreign grown Rice. According to official figures, Nigeria has been ramping up rice production, with local output rising by 60% since 2013. But at 4.8 million tons last year, local rice production was still not enough for the 190 million Nigerians.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.

Taking Risk: What African Startup Founders Are Saying

Of course, the most crucial moment at Amazon’s re: Mars conference in Las Vegas in June, 2019 would be when Jeff Bezos was asked his greatest piece of advice for anyone still wishing or already running a business.

“Take risk,’’ he was quoted as saying. ‘‘You have to be willing to take risk.’’

Bezos went as far as noting that if you have a business idea with no risk, it’s probably already being done.

“You’ve got to have something that might not work. It will be, in many ways, an experiment,’’ he said. ‘‘Many of those experiments will fail, but “big failures” are a necessary part of the journey toward success.’’

At a time when many African startup founders are increasingly opening themselves up for more funding, letting their doors wide open for equity and debt investors as well as launching bids to scale their operation, risk-taking or dreaming big has almost become inevitable. So, a question may be asked as to what role effective risk-taking plays in growing a startup, from the scratch to the point of a successful exit. A few African startup founders appear to have some suggestions.

Mostafa Kandil, the Egyptian co-founder of Swvl, advises startup founders to consider the path of risk.

‘‘Take risks because what you’re already doing is a risk in its own,’’he said. ‘‘You probably left a job to start a business so you’re already taking it. Make sure you keep doing it onwards a well.’’

Kandil describes the most difficult moment he had ever been faced with to be when he decided to quit Careem, a ride-sharing company similar to his startup. Having spent already spent six months there, it was a big deal to quit.

‘‘When I was leaving Careem, it was quire heartbreaking actually,’’he told MENABytes.‘‘I was in love with Careem. Although my stay at Careem was very short (6 months) but the amount of things I was able to learn in this short time was remarkable.’’

Kandil says it was really a big deal to abandon work for the uncertain terrains of founding a startup.

‘‘To be honest since I started,’’ he notes. ‘‘I have taken quite a few risks. I think the biggest risk was to shift from being Petroleum Engineer to doing something else. It was not easy to study something and then end up doing a completely different thing. Also, your parents could never really understand what you’re doing. When I called my mom to tell her how I made it to Forbes after Careem’s investment. She was like ‘good for you’.’’

Even though the coast may have been clearer for Kandil to predict the outcome of his risk-taking efforts, it leaves a little hint of darkness for Jamila Gordon, the former dish washer born to Somalian parents, who recently raised $3.5 million in a funding round led by the CSIRO-linked venture capital investor Main Sequence for her anti-slavery Australia-based blockchain startup, Lumachain. Gordon has built a culture of dreaming big, a good substitute for risk-taking, over time.

“My father said to me, ‘I might never see you again, but here’s what I would like you to take away,’” Gordon recalls. “The first principle was: ‘Make yourself useful’. For me, in business, that means driving value. The second piece of advice was to remember that wherever I ended up in the world, no-one would know who I was. So I was free to imagine myself as a piece of white cloth on which I could decide what would be written. When I look back now, that meant I should be the best possible version of myself. This has been a core value of mine over the years. The third piece of advice was to dream big. “Throughout my life, I’ve found myself constantly imagining what I can be. It’s a process of dreaming that never ends.”

Dreaming big (and a bit of luck nevertheless) has probably seen Gordon move quickly from escaping his war-torn Somalia to taking a shot at dishwashing in Australia before blossoming fully into a software developer, moving across different continents, and at different times working for the likes of IBM, Deloitte, Qantas as its Group CIO, CIMIC Limited, GetSwift among others.

“Resilience is like a muscle that can be developed over time. And the way to develop it is by consciously putting yourself in situations that stretch you,” she says.

“For example, if someone asks you to do a job you don’t feel fully equipped to do, don’t say no. Take it, and learn it on the job, because by consciously putting yourself in those kinds of situations you will learn so much.”

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world

Andela Has Laid Off Junior Engineers In Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda But Not In Rwanda

Some of the office spaces for junior engineers at Africa-focused outsourcing startup Andela in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda are already empty but this is not so in the East African country of Rwanda. No Rwandans will be affected by the restructuring and consequent lay off by Andela. In fact, Andela is bringing on board more junior engineers in that country.

Here Is All You Need To Know

In 2018,Andela entered the Rwandan local market after cabinet approval and the signing of an MOU on the establishment of a Pan-African tech hub.
The MOU with the government will also remain unaffected.

“The recent strategic shift at Andela does not alter the MOU that we signed with the Rwanda govt. In fact, moving forward, we will be focusing our junior engineer training efforts on our pan-African hub in Rwanda,” Clement Uwajeneza, the Country Director at Andela Kigali told Business Times.

Andela had earlier in a statement by the Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Andela, Jeremy Johnson said that as part of a restructuring exercise to be fit for purpose in line with their clients, they would ‘be releasing approximately 250 Andelans in Nigeria and Uganda, with an additional 170 potentially impacted in Kenya.’
According to the agreement signed with the government last year, Andela committed to recruit and train up to 500 Rwandans with expertise in software development and offer them six months paid training.
The startup also noted that they are seeking to intensify their training in Rwanda as part of responding to market demands.
Trainees are expected to receive over 900 skill checkpoints enabling them to be competitive across the world. Thereafter, Andela is expected offer the new trainees jobs as remote members of software development teams at world leading firms.
In the training phase of the 500 software developers, the firm said that they expect to incur between $15,000 and $20,000 each, raising its market entry outlay to between $7.5 million and to $10 million.
The firm launched operations in Nigeria in 2014, to help global companies overcome the severe shortage of skilled software developers and has offices in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and the United States.

Read also: Why California’s New Employment Law Could Return All Logistics, Transport And Similar Startups In Africa To Square One

Andela Is Changing Its Strategy By Laying Off Junior Staff Who Are Liabilities Under Its Current Model

Andela noted that the restructuring of the company was necessitated by a demand for senior developers by their clients which has made it a challenge keeping junior developers on their team.

“While placing teams led by senior engineers has helped drive additional junior placement, it hasn’t been enough. We now have significantly more junior talent than we are able to place. Just as important, those junior engineers want, and deserve, authentic work experience that we are not able to provide. As a result, we’ve come to the conclusion that Andela’s next phase of growth requires a strategic shift in how we think about talent.”

“Going forward, we will hire another 700 experienced engineers by the end of 2020 in order to keep up with demand from our partners,” Johnson’s statement said.

For the employees to be laid off, the firm said that they were putting in place support programmes such as learning and job placement services to ensure a smooth transition.

“We have identified over 60 companies who are looking to hire top quality junior engineering talent,” the statement said.

The firm in January this year announced that it had raised $100 million funding through its fourth round seed stage financing, also known as Series D funding.

The money was raised through a venture capital drive that was led by UK-based firm, Generation Investment Management.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world

West African Countries to Adopt Technology for Disease control

September 21, 2019

The spate of communicable diseases (CDs) and other tropical diseases within the West African sub region is giving both governments and health authorities a lot of concern. To mitigate on this, the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), made up of the 15 member countries of ECOWAS are leveraging technology that will help to prevent hem prevent cross-border outbreaks of epidemics including Ebola, cholera, yellow fever, Lassa fever, measles, onchocerciasis and meningitis. This was made known yesterday after the presentation of range of health systems aimed at strengthening solutions in Nigeria and West Africa by representatives of BroadReach Consulting during the just concluded Nigeria Implementation Science Alliance conference in Abuja. This will be achieved by employing the Regional Actions Through Data known as RAD program which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Speaking on the development, the Acting Program Director Regional Actions Through Data at BroadReach Consulting Dr Uchenna Nwokenna, said that every year, infectious diseases such as Ebola and malaria claim the lives of about five million Africans, and the inability to monitor and share information at scale has been a major set-back in the control of outbreaks. He further noted that these outbreaks have major, far-reaching implications for the communities they affect. He added that “we believe that the prevention and control of infectious disease outbreaks is possible when you combine human ingenuity and technology.”

BroadReach Consulting with headquarters in Cape Town, South Africa is the implementing partner of Vantage Technologies, a Swiss registered software development company, works with various partners in many African countries, including the PEPFAR-funded grant for USAIDS’s five-year epidemic control program in South Africa, called APACE (Accelerating Program Achievements to Control the Epidemic). Vantage Technologies leverages big data to help strengthen healthcare systems in emerging economies.

That is why WAHO is exploring innovative uses of technology to support improvement of the production, dissemination and use of health information through weekly and quarterly epidemiological bulletins, regional health profiles and a regional statistical yearbook. It also hopes to use it to strengthen cross-border health and epidemiological surveillance through the cross-border health mapping, monitoring of epidemic-prone diseases (EPDs) vaccination and HIV programmes, and cross-border collaboration.

RAD is using the ‘Disease Threat Management Solution’ of BroadReach Consulting, which leverages Vantage technology to track and analyse data for major infectious diseases, including Ebola, Onchocerciasis and Cholera, in each country.

Vantage collates and digests a large amount of indicator data from different countries to produce a weekly Epidemiology Bulletin. The weekly bulletin is circulated among senior health officials and, should there be a risk of an outbreak or an actual occurrence in a border region, the relevant agencies are alerted and guided to mobilise resources and take effective action to prevent or contain the outbreak.

The ‘Disease Threat Management Solution’ is a breakthrough in the control of disease outbreaks because it utilises multi-source and multi-country data for expedited response and decision making. Previously, when an outbreak occurred in one country, a neighbouring country might have learnt of the risk only after it emerged within its borders. The inability to monitor and share information at scale has been a major set-back in the control of infectious disease outbreaks, until now.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.

President Ramaphosa Envoy, Jeff Radebe Promises to Mend Fences across Africa

As South Africa reels from the after effects of the xenophobic attacks on nationals from other African countries, more countries have ramped up evacuation processes of their citizens in the country; President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special envoy to select African countries assures fellow African countries that the government is taking every necessary step to ensure a safe and secure South Africa. The team started their visits from Nigeria where they met with President Muhammadu Buhari, from there they went to Niger, Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to deliver a message of solidarity from President Cyril Ramaphosa.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa

However, more countries have continued the evacuation of their citizens from South Africa which observers see as a draw back to the shuttle diplomacy engaged in by President Ramaphosa and his government. It could be recalled that a second batch of over 300 Nigerians were evacuated from South Africa over the week, while countries like Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have also been evacuating their citizens from South Africa.

Analysts say that South African government has been under enormous pressure to assure the world that their country is safe for foreigners because the xenophobic attacks has had negative impacts on consumer confidence, and the economy in general as the hopes of the economy coming out of recession dims. The country is working hard to address its dented image abroad.

Inspite of the development, the Special Envoy which consists of South Africa’s former Minister of Energy, Jeff Radebe, Ambassador Kingsley Mmabolo and Dr Khulu Mbatha, a veteran of the African National Congress; President Cyril Ramaphosa is determined to assure fellow African countries that the government is taking every necessary step to ensure a safe and secure South Africa; Special Envoy Jeff Radebe is the 2018 recipient of the Big Five Energy award presented by Africa Oil & Power (AOP).

The group of Presidential Special Envoys will deliver a message of solidarity from South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa to the heads of state as a means to assure them that the government is committed to addressing xenophobic attacks which sparked in the Gauteng province earlier this month.

“The Special Envoys are tasked with reassuring fellow African countries that South Africa is committed to the ideals of pan-African unity and solidarity. The Special Envoys will also reaffirm South Africa’s commitment to the rule of law,” said an official statement by The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa.

Special Envoy Radebe already met with Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari; President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo and Senegal’s President, Macky Sall since the tour started on September 14, 2019. Buhari assured them that the recent ugly incident will not taint the good diplomatic relationship between Nigeria and South Africa, but called on the South African government to take stringent steps to ensure such occurrence never repeats itself.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.