By Apolinari Tairo

The European Union, through the Energy for Growth and Sustainable Development programme, has given Tanzania €180 million ($200 million) to develop its energy sector.

The bloc, working with the German Development Bank (KfW) and the French Agency for Development (AFD), is funding a €42 million ($47 million) electrification project in northwestern Tanzania, covering the Kagera, Geita and Kigoma Regions.

The head of the EU delegation in Tanzania, Roeland Van de Geer, said that reliable energy is key to poverty reduction and pledged more support to make energy available across Tanzania.

Energy is one of the three focal areas of the EU’s development co-operation with Tanzania. The other two are agriculture and governance.

The energy programme seeks to increase supply from minihydro projects in southern Tanzania, solar minigrids on some Lake Victoria islands, and develop transmission and distribution infrastructure.

Budget supportLast month, the EU delegation in Tanzania signed a financing agreement for a €205 million ($228 million) advance as part of a €626 million ($696 million) grant the bloc offered Tanzania for the period between 2014 and 2020 in budget support and for energy and agriculture projects.

Tanzania has low electricity access rates, with fuel wood and charcoal accounting for 90 per cent of its total energy use. Despite a significant increase in the number of household connections, the number of customers served by the Tanzania Electricity Supply Company remains under 1.5 million out of a 45 million population.

The annual per capita electricity consumption in Tanzania is 100kWh. The available power generation capacity currently stands at about 1,500 MW a year, with renewable resources — solar, wind, geothermal, co-generation from biomass and small hydropower — contributing little to the national grid.

By Clement Malambo

Minister of National Planning Lucky Mulusa and his team have identified Ngabwe in Central Province as the new site for the country’s new capital city.

Mulusa has announced that a proposal to select Ngabwe as the new capital city is ready and will be submitted to Cabinet for consideration.

When appointed as minister, Mulusa embarked on a strategy to establish future plans that will help decongest Lusaka.

Lusaka has over the years grown with its population increasing at a fast pace over the years. According to the last census, the population in one of southern Africa’s fast growing states was estimated at 1.8 million people.

Experts say the population in Lusaka has grown to over 2.5 million and is soon to breach the 3 million mark.

Mulusa says there was no proper planning for Lusaka to hold its current population.

He said says the Ministry of National Planning was going to present to Cabinet a request to go ahead and do feasibility studies of the new capital city.

Mulusa says his ministry had devised a plan to come up with a new capital city that would be able to compete with other African cities.

“When you look at Lusaka in the next 10 years, the city will not be able to sustain us. The rate at which commerce and industry and official activities are growing cannot be met with Lusaka’s ability to grow its capacity.

“Human settlement on its own is a problem and that is why my ministry is proposing that we start up a completely new capital city that will be planned on the modern principles of sustainable development,” he said.

Mulusa said Ngabwe, west of Kabwe, was an ideal location for the capital city of Zambia because it was more central than Lusaka and it was easier to start building a city from scratch.

By Isaac Imaka

Parliament — Members of Parliament yesterday castigated minister for ICT and National Guidance, Mr Frank Tumwebaze accusing him of disrespecting Parliament directives and portraying the institution as toothless and less important.

Speaking during Plenary in the wake of a presidential directive to push the SIM card registration deadline to end of August, Buhweju legislator, Francis Mwijukye appealed to Parliament to take action against what he termed as a “blatant disregard of Parliament resolutions” by a minister, who is also a Member of Parliament.

The legislators called for a public apology from Mr Tumwebaze arguing that a strong message needs to be sent to other ministers, especially those who are directed elected to the House, so that Parliament retains its majesty.

“One would understand if an ex office member comes and disparages Parliament but I find it unacceptable that a member voted by the House comes here and disrespects the House. The House should express displeasure about the conduct of the minister and now that he is here it should be his opportune moment to redeem his image,” Lwemiyaga County MP, Theodore Ssekikubo said.

The Leader of Opposition, Winfred Kiiza said, “We want the minister to come up with a public apology for not respecting the resolution of this House and for not consulting the chair of this House.”

In his defence, Mr Tumwebaze referred to claims that he disrespected and belittled the House as “blatant falsehoods” saying that his conscience is clear about what he said.

“I told the journalists that the Speaker has a right to rebuke her members if she demands performance from them. I said that for the times I have not been in the House, I have written to the Speaker and she has allowed me. To insinuate that in my personal capacity I belittled the speaker is false. I did not do that,” he said.

On apologizing for insisting that the deadline will be effected, Mr Tumwebze said he was simply communicating a government position as the information minister.

“I seek guidance from the Speaker and the Prime Minister as the executive. The announcement I made was not a personal decision. It was a decision of cabinet. I take responsibility for communicating a government position. If that angered the House I take responsibility and apologies for that,” he said.

Last week, Parliament passed a resolution to have the deadline for the registration of SIM cards pushed by one year to allow for those who are yet to secure national identity cards to get them.

Contrary to the resolution, Mr Tumwebaze went ahead and announced that the ban will be effected albeit the Parliament resolution. He used the word advisory, in describing Parliament resolution.

The Speaker insisted that Mr Tumwebaze should have communicated to Parliament before heading to address the press at Media Centre.

“Whether you were communicating government position, you were obliged to come to Parliament first. We share a building,” she said, ordering the Rules committee “to listen to the recordings, tell us what was said and then we know what to do with the issue of honourable Tumwebaze.”

Last evening, during an NRM Caucus meeting the president ignored his minister and ordered for a push to August.

The speaker welcomed the order and asked government to, “always read the mood of the public and act in the interest of the people.”

“People have lost money. URA has lost money. Ordinary people have suffered. The people gave all of us a mandate and we are here to represent their interest,” she said before Mr Ssekikubo raised dissatisfaction with the presidential directive.

“It is not the best way to have the president jump on every matter. If the Executive was dissatisfied, there is a procedure of revisiting decisions of this house. Short of that this House will cease being relevant if decisions will have to be taken elsewhere and you have to just inform the speaker about what was decided. Madam Speaker, protect this House,” he said.

By Henry Umoru

Abuja — The Senate, yesterday, urged the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to urgently convert lower currency notes into coins to facilitate retail transactions in the country.

The upper chamber said it had become very imperative to make the use of coins compulsory because in developed countries as the United Kingdom, United States of America, USA; Japan, China, European Union, EU; and the entire United Arab Emirate, UAE, coins were used as means of exchange through cash transactions.

To make this very effective, the Senate has asked the CBN to sanction any commercial bank that refuses to collect coins from customers, even as it urged the apex bank to redesign the nation’s currency to cater for what it described as highly repetitive transactions of the country’s economy.

It also asked the CBN to intensify its sensitization campaign and other efforts to bring back coins into circulation in the nation’s market.

The resolutions of the Senate were sequel to a motion by Senator Mustapha Bukar (APC, Katsina North), entitled Non-usage of coin currencies in Nigeria and its negative effects on the economy.

In his presentation, Senator Mustapha Bukar said: “The Senate notes that according to the Central Bank of Nigeria, all currencies shall be legal tender in Nigeria at their face value and that Nigeria’s currency as at now comprises three coin denominations and eight note denominations, including 50kobo, N1 and N2, while the note denominations are N5, N10, N20, N100, N200, N500 and N1000.”

He noted that in Nigeria, there were two types of retail payments, the highly repetitive small value transactions such as urban transportation, sweets, cigarettes, kolanuts, vegetables, sachet water etc, as well as less frequent but high value transactions, such as clothing, footwear, raw foodstuffs, electronics etc.

He said coin currencies globally were designed to cater for the highly repetitive transactions because of the nature and conditions under which they happen, such as crowded markets, bus stations, congested traffic and varying weather conditions, including rainy, sunny and humid.

Bukar observed that countries regularly upgraded their coinage to keep pace with the prices of this category of retail items, adding that the Senate was aware of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians engaging in the highly repetitive small value transactions due to their income and locations.

He also expressed the Senate’s concern that though the nation’s currencies were in notes and coins, indications were that coins were fast going out of fashion and into extinction in Nigeria;

Bukar said the Senate also regrets the fact that coins disappeared in Nigeria because the face value of the metal used in producing it was lower than its intrinsic value, as people would always take it to black/goldsmiths to turn it into jewelry and other ornaments.

By Julius Barigaba

Rift Valley Railways is running out of time to save its concession as it emerged that the company, which the Kenya government served with a termination notice in April, is on the verge of being served a similar notice by the Uganda government.

Stephen Wakasenza, chief concession officer at Uganda Railways Corporation, told The EastAfrican that the concessionaire had been served with two notices, whose timeframe has now elapsed, but RVR has not managed to address the issues raised.

“There are three notices in this process. The first notice elapsed after 30 days; on April 12, we served them the second, which is a notice of intention to terminate, also for 30 days within which they have to remedy the issues. After this, we will serve them with the final notice, which is a notice of termination,” he said.

At this point, it is only the lenders of the Kenya-Uganda railway concessionaire that can step in to save the company from losing its passenger and cargo haulage business in the two countries.

The EastAfrican has learnt that none of the lenders has so far committed to pumping more money into the troubled concession even as RVR hurtle towards the final 90-day notice from URC.

In Kenya, all the three notices have been issued and the concessionaire is only awaiting the expiry of the ultimate notice of termination, which gives the company 90 days to find a solutions to its problems.

The final notice from Kenya Railways Corporation, which RVR is still serving, expires at the end of June.

“A team from Uganda has travelled to Kenya to see what is happening. If lenders are to step in, they have to formally write to us. And as of now, they haven’t,” Mr Wakasenza said.

Contractual obligations

When contacted three weeks ago, German lender KfW — one of RVR’s pioneer lenders, along with the International Finance Corporation — remained cagey over its continued financing of the 25-year concession.

“Since this issue concerns the ongoing customer relationship of KfW and the concessionaire, we are bound to contractual obligations and shall respect the liability law. Therefore we cannot communicate on funding related issues in this case,” said Oliver Junger, director of KfW Kampala office.

Joram Nyanzi, general manager RVR Western, remains upbeat that the concession can be salvaged because “RVR is working with both governments and the respective regulators to resolve the issues.”

Mr Nyanzi said RVR remains committed to the concession in which it has invested $287 million to turn around the railway and that in spite of the notices, “We continue to operate our railway services as normal between Mombasa and all inland destinations.”

However, Mr Nyanzi’s optimism seems to run counter to the thinking within the Uganda government.

On May 16, for instance, Uganda’s Works and Transport Minister Monica Ntege-Azuba, while giving updates on the one-year progress on implementation of the ruling party’s manifesto, especially the status of the multibillion dollar standard gauge railway project, hinted that the government was ready to call up time on the RVR concession.

“We’ve issued a letter of intent to terminate services of RVR. They are not performing,” the standard gauge railway office quoted the minister in a tweet.

The moves to end the concession started in July 2016 when URC issued a notice of default to the concessionaire in which the government agency that owns the Ugandan arm of the railway voiced its frustrations with RVR for consistently failing to meet parameters especially increase in freight traffic volumes, payment of concession fees and maintenance of the concession assets.

By Alex Gitta

A group of gay rights activists in Uganda have taken a government agency to court for refusing to register their organization. Homosexuality is illegal in the country, and violence against sexual minorities is rife.

Sexual Minorities Uganda lodged its case with the High Court after the Ugandan Registration Service Bureau knocked back the organization’s attempt to register its name.

In a statement on its website, the rights group – also known by the acronym SMUG – said it expects the Kampala-based court to hand down a decision at the end of the month.

The activists have been struggling since 2012 to register their organization – a step they say would guarantee certain benefits and obligations crucial to carrying out their work.

They opted to sue after receiving a rejection letter from the registration bureau explaining that their chosen name, Sexual Minorities Uganda, was “undesirable and because homosexuals and same sex relations are illegal in Uganda, the bureau cannot legitimize an illegality.”

“We decided to file a case in court purposely to advocate for the rights of association and assembly because an organization in law is incapable of committing a criminal act,” Patricia Kimera, one of the lawyers on the activists’ side, told DW.

SMUG’s legal team argues that the government agency’s decision violates a number of rights enshrined in the Ugandan constitution, including freedom of association, expression, assembly and the rights of minorities to participate in decision-making processes.

Working underground

Homosexuality has been a criminal offense in Uganda since 1952. Like much of sub-Saharan Africa, the country is socially conservative and deeply religious. That reality makes it difficult for minority rights groups like SMUG to operate, particularly if they can’t register as an organization, says SMUG legal coordinator Daglous Mawadri.

“There are so many challenges of running an organization that is not registered,” he told DW. “One is the fact that you have to operate underground. For example, you cannot apply outright to donors, you cannot have funds, you cannot have spaces to operate. That means most of the things that you do have to be underground.”

Anti-gay policies

In recent years, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has also tried to pass legislation to curtail LGBT rights further. In 2014 he signed a law that punished same sex relations with long prison terms. He has gone on record several times condemning homosexuality and accusing groups of “deliberately recruiting people who are not homosexual into homosexuality” by offering them money. His anti-gay legislation sparked an international outcry, leading some countries to withhold aid funding. The law was later overturned by the constitutional court on a technicality.

Nevertheless, homosexuality remains illegal in Uganda, and assaults on lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the country are on the rise, according to Human Rights Watch.

SMUG says its aim is to improve the rights situation for sexual minorities through advocacy, policy reform and economic empowerment, along with providing counseling and other services. And while they wait for the upcoming court decision, they’ll likely continue this work, albeit underground for now.

By Jonathan Adengo

Kampala — Uganda Development Bank Ltd (UDB) has received a line of credit worth about Shs95 billion from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) for onward lending to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Uganda.

Mr Bandar M.H.Hajjar, the president of the IDB Group and Ms Patricia Ojangole, the chief executive officer UDB jointly signed the financing agreements for Uganda’s SMEs.

Speaking after the signing of the $10 million (Shs36b) agreements last Thursday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Ms Ojangole said this is a significant milestone in the bank’s strategy to grow liabilities and improve its capacity, to grow enterprises in the private sector. “This will go a long way in widening private sector credit as well as stimulating economic growth and development,” Ms Ojangole said.

Signing of these financing agreements was one of the activities of the four-day IDB Group’s annual meetings that ended on May 18 in Jeddah.

UDB received $10 million (about Shs36 billion) from IDB and an additional $16 million (about Shs58 billion) from BADEA. This brings the total line of credit to close to Shs95 billion.

Because of such support from government and multilaterals such as the IDB and BADEA, “UDB has steadily registered social-economic impact such as job creation, contribution of taxes paid from UDB-funded projects, foreign exchange and production value of godsend services,” said Mr MartinRoy Lukwago, the UDB head of treasury.

UDB is the country’s only development bank which aligns itself with the National Development Plan typically looking at specific sectors of development.

Accessing this money

Prospective borrowers will be able to access the funds through the normal processes of getting credit from the bank. The borrowers, too, must have registered businesses with viable plans.

A gang of criminals is waylaying trucks delivering tobacco to auction floors and stealing bales while the vehicles are in motion.

This revelation comes after police arrested two people – one of the thieves and a buyer – after raiding a house in the Hopley area where they recovered several bales of tobacco believed to have been stolen from different farmers using the same method.

The two were taken to Mbare Police Station where they are still assisting police with investigations.

Police made a follow-up after discovering that thieves had stolen some tobacco bales in the Westgate area from a lorry ferrying more than 28 bales from a farm in Banket.

The driver, Mr Elisha Kupara, who was travelling with Mr Kelvin Nyadzayo, were stopped by the police after noticing that a rope used to secure the consignment had been cut.

Mr Wensley Muchineri, the owner of the lorry, said: “They were driving towards the city centre and near Westgate Shopping Centre the driver was flashed by a kombi that was coming from the opposite direction and he reduced speed.

“However, there was another vehicle, a small pick-up truck that was following from behind with an unknown number of passengers. One of the passengers then took advantage to jump into the back of the lorry and cut a rope that was used to secure the tobacco bales.”

Police, who were on patrol, noticed the rope that had been cut and flagged Mr Kupara to stop before discovering the offence.

Mr Kupara narrated that he had been flashed by a commuter omnibus and police started to drive around looking for the kombi, which they intercepted, resulting in a high- speed chase.

Warning shots were fired and police managed to arrest one of the suspects, while the others escaped.

The suspect led police to the buyer’s house in Hopley where they arrested him.

The kombi was impounded and taken to Mbare Police Station.

The owner of the tobacco, Mr Tendai Mushangwe, applauded the police and urged them to continue patrolling in order to bring to book some of the criminals involved in such activities.

Investigations revealed that the thieves sold the tobacco to buyers who repacked it at their safe house, before reselling it at the auction floors.

By Kieran Guilbert

Magou — Lack of storage forces farmers to sell their harvest at low prices – but changing that can help them get ahead

Surveying his village’s stocks of rice, sesame, millet and other food in a storehouse piled high with bags, Amadou Hassane is satisfied – but still a little anxious about the oversupply of baobab leaves.

With the rainy season set to start soon in Niger, Hassane and his fellow farmers need buyers for their leaves before the rains come, driving the prices down as fresh leaves sprout and supply surges across the western region of Tillabery.

“Life is hard because it is difficult to know when the first rains will come,” Hassane told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, holding a list of each farmer’s contribution to the village’s stockpile.

“But we are lucky to have this warrantage system in place, because it means we can sell when the price is good, rather than being forced to do so right away after harvest,” he added.

Because of a lack of storage facilities, many farmers across the developing world have no choice but to sell their produce after harvest, usually at low prices because supplies are plentiful at that time.

Later in the year, they then need to buy food for their families – but during this “lean season”, before the next harvest, prices for grain and other food are at their highest.

To add to their problems, in countries like Niger, in Africa’s Sahel region, increasingly erratic weather patterns and unpredictable climate shocks – such as floods and droughts – are hitting harvests.

That has left many of the West Africa nation’s 20 million people struggling to grow or afford enough food.

But a rural credit scheme that lets farmers store their harvest and obtain loans against it – with the money paid back in the dry season when crop prices and sales income are higher – is boosting resilience to climate change, experts say.

The warrantage system is part of a project launched in 2015, funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) and led by CARE International, to help farming communities in Niger access loans, and encourage them to diversify the crops and products they store.

“Warrantage builds resilience because by selling produce for higher profit, you can absorb climate shocks better … and avoid resorting to negative coping strategies like eating fewer meals,” said Penda Diallo, a senior resilience adviser at CARE.

DIVERSIFICATION KEY

The warrantage effort is part of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) programme, which aims to help 450,000 people in western Niger become better prepared for weather shocks by improving their access to climate and weather information, strengthening village savings and loans associations (VSLAs), and introducing warrantage.

As part of the initiative more than 500 people in several communities in the Tillabery region have begun storing dozens of tonnes of cereal, vegetables and forest products such as edible moringa tree and baobab leaves.

Users – most of them women – turn in part of their harvest and are given a loan by a local microfinance institution working with BRACED.

The loan tends to be around 70-80 percent of the value of their crops, with the seasonal price difference meant to cover the costs of credit and storage.

Given the increasingly threat of poor harvests due to the impact of climate change, farmers are being encouraged to broaden the range of crops and products they grow and store, to better protect them against price fluctations and to give them stock to sell throughout the year.

“Varying and expanding warrantage beyond one crop makes the collective fund stronger, and encourages people to also turn to non-agriculture ventures like making soap, oils and jewellery,” said Ali Badara of Mooriben, a local partner of CARE in Niger.

Improved weather forecasts – broadcast over the radio and via text messages – and a drive to strengthen local savings groups both have resulted in more reliable harvests, which is now making warrantage a viable option for more people, according to agriculture experts.

“They all link together,” Badara said.

For Fati Boubacar and many other women in her village, being part of savings groups has allowed them to access loans. That has let them not only focus on new ways to earn cash – such as making health and beauty products – but also invest in improving their farming.

“Without access to the money through our VSLAs, we wouldn’t have been able to increase our crop yield to the extent to be part of warrantage,” said Boubacar, head of a union of 90 women.

BRINGING IN BANKS

One of the main obstacles to encouraging more people to get involved with warrantage in Niger, and across West Africa, is the increasingly erratic nature of the seasons, said Catherine Simonet of the Overseas Development Insitute (ODI), a London-based thinktank.

“It’s tough to build trust … there is a lot of uncertanity to manage,” said the researcher. “You will often hear farmers say: ‘Last year it didn’t work, this year it is going well, but I am not sure what to do next year’.”

Storing the harvest is another challenge in a region where up to 40 percent of food harvested is lost before reaching the market due to a lack of proper facilities for storage, processing or transport, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Storage infrastructure is generally poor across the region, and this should be addressed quickly,” Simonet said.

The BRACED project’s success in helping hundreds of farmers in Tillabery build increasing financial resilience should encourage banks and microfinance institutions to step in and help other farmers as well, project officials say.

Warrantage is often the first step towards rural farming communities accessing formal banking services, experts say.

At the end of their first season, new warrantage groups in Tillabery should have a bank account with enough savings to enable them to take out a loan or limit how much they need to borrow for the next harvest, project officials said.

Adamou Soumana, a farmer and warrantage leader in Kubio village, couldn’t hide his delight as he tallied the numbers for his warrange group, which is heading into its third season.

“Our stock’s value went up from 730,000 CFA francs ($1,215) to 840,000 CFA ($1,400) in one year. We were so happy,” he said.

“We now have a range of different products in storage, and are confident we can handle whatever surprises come our way,” he said.

Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, editing by Zoe Tabary and Laurie Goering