President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has invited Saudi Arabia to interest itself and invest in Uganda's coffee. met and held discussions with Ahmed Bin Abdul- Aziz Kattan a Royal Court advisor in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Museveni was meeting Saudi Arabia Royal Court advisor, Ahmed Bin Abdul-Aziz Kattan at State House Entebbe.
“I want you to invest in coffee processing. We lose a lot of money from selling raw coffee, we get only $2.5 per kilogram instead of $40. It is like oil the way it was in the past where a barrel of oil in 1969 was 40 cents, it was not even $1 USD. When there was the Arab-Israeli war in 1973, that is when there was a boycott and a barrel went to $40,” Museveni explained.
“That was the beginning of the petrodollars. That is how some wealth moved from western Europe to oil-producing countries. This is the same problem with these other raw materials like coffee,” he added.
Museveni reiterated that it would be a good idea if Kattan can identify and get Uganda a company that will be able to process coffee here, further assuring him that there was a ready market for the agricultural product world over.
President Museveni with Ahmed Bin Abdul-Aziz Kattan at State House
“The global business for coffee is $460 billion but the coffee-producing countries; all of us, share only $25 billion and Africa shares $2.4 billion. Germany, a non-coffee-producing country, earns more from coffee than the whole of Africa. It earns $6.4 billion,” Museveni stressed.
“So, if you can get me a company which can roast coffee here, grind and pack, it will be good. I was in Serbia; they are ready to buy our processed coffee but even the Americans if we process it, they will buy it because we have got an agreement with them, AGOA,” Museveni added.
Kattan assured Museveni that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was ready to cooperate with Uganda.
“I mentioned to the minister of Foreign Affairs that we would like to increase the investment with Uganda so if you have any projects, you like Saudi Arabia to support, we would like to receive a study. You can send it to the embassy of Saudi Arabia, they will send it to us,” he said.
Kattan also extended an invitation to Museveni to visit Saudi Arabia and attend two forthcoming summits.
“We are going to host two African summits; the Saudi Arabia Summit and the Arab-Africa summit and on behalf of my government, I would like you to be there,” he noted.
President Museveni responded in the affirmative. “No problem, we shall definitely come."
The meeting was also attended by Foreign Affairs minister, Gen Jeje Odongo and other members of the delegation from Saudi Arabia. Last year in June during the State of the Nation Address, Museveni defended a controversial and unpopular decision to offer tax waivers, free land, free electricity among others to Italian investor Enrica Pinetti to invest in value addition into Uganda's coffee. It is not immediately clear how far the Pinetti deal has gone. By URN/The Observer
TEHRAN, Aug. 15 (MNA) – At least 26 members of the Nigerian security forces were killed and eight wounded in an ambush by gunmen in central Nigeria late Sunday, two military sources said.
Additionally, an air force spokesman said a helicopter rescuing the wounded crashed on Monday morning in the area, where the army is fighting criminal groups, without specifying whether the crew and passengers had survived.
The two military officers who told AFP the report asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the incident while military authorities were not available for comment.
“We lost 23 soldiers, including three officers, and three Civilians JTF [vigilantes] in the encounter while eight soldiers were injured,” said the first source, following “a serious fight” along the Zungeru-Tegina highway.
A second officer gave the same toll and said the bandits also suffered “heavy casualties.” He also said that communication had been lost with an air force helicopter dispatched to evacuate the casualties, with 11 of the dead and seven of the injured aboard.
He said the helicopter was carrying 11 of the dead and seven of the wounded. He added that the aircraft had crashed because of gunfire from “bandits.”
A Nigerian air force spokesman confirmed that its Mi-171 helicopter while on a “casualty evacuation mission” crashed on Monday after take-off from Zungeru.
“The aircraft had departed Zungeru Primary School en route for Kaduna but was later discovered to have crashed near Chukuba Village in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State,” spokesman Edward Gabkwet said in a statement.
He said efforts were underway to rescue those aboard and that preliminary investigations had been opened into the cause of the crash.
Barely a week goes by in Africa’s most populous nation without attacks or kidnappings by criminals known as “bandits” in the northwest and center of the country.
The gangs, who have been notorious for mass school abductions, maintain camps in a vast forest straddling the states of Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara and Katsina.
Northwest and central Nigeria have for years been terrorized by bandits who raid remote villages where they kill and abduct residents for ransom, as well as burn homes after looting them.
Impunity as well as insufficient security and wider government presence has allowed the violence to fester, experts say. MNA/PR
DAR ES SALAAM, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa on Monday urged cashew nuts growers to process the crop locally in order to add value before they sell it to international markets.
Speaking in the Newala district in the Mtwara region on his official tour of the cashew nuts growing region, Majaliwa said growers of the cash crop will remain poor if they continued selling raw cashew nuts.
"Now is the time for change. We should use this opportunity to establish cashew nuts processing plants and sell the processed nuts to the international markets," said Majaliwa.
He said a kg of processed cashew nuts was selling at 13,000 Tanzanian shillings (about 5.22 U.S. dollars) while a kg of raw cashew nuts was selling at 2,000 shillings.
Majaliwa said by processing the cashew nuts locally, growers of the crop could also benefit from extracting oil from the shells of the crop.
Tanzania produced 400,000 metric tons of cashew nuts in the 2022/2023 period, but the Cashewnuts Board of Tanzania plans to increase production of the crop to 700,000 metric tons in the 2025/2026 period. - Xinhua
Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir opens a master valve of a well at the Paka Hills in Baringo County. [File, Standard]
The government will next year competitively select power producers that will build electricity generating plants at the Baringo-Silali geothermal fields, wich are then expected to start electricity production by 2028.
This is as Kenya eyes increased electricity production from geothermal to reduce reliance on hydro power that is prone to weather shocks s as well as displace costly thermal power plants.
The Baringo-Silali fields, which are outside the traditional geothermal fields of Olkaria, offer an opportunity to increase geothermal’s installed capacity. The fields have capacity to produce an estimated 3,000 megawatts making them an appealing alternative for the country that now needs to balance between availing power to the grid and making it affordable.
While geothermal resources in Kenya are estimated to have a potential to produce 10,000MW, the country has exploited about 950MW to date. Of this, about 800MW is generated at power plants built by Kengen while the balance is by Independent Power Producers (IPPs) Orpower that produces 150MW at its plants at Olkaria and the recently launched 35MW plant by Sosian Energy at Menengai.
At Baringo-Silali, the Geothermal Development Company (GDC) has drilled wells that can generate up to 70MW and said it will increase this to 100MW by end of this year. It will then invite power companies to build plants that will produce electricity using the geothermal steam from these wells.
GDC expects the first plant that will have an installed capacity to start feeding the power grid by 2028.
Baringo Silali has quite the potential. One of the wells drilled there set a record of sorts when steam gushing out can produce 22MW of electricity. THis is in comparison to 5MW that ordinary wells produce on average.
“Having one well discharging steam at 22MW is equivalent to drilling about four wells that discharge at 5MW. When you consider that to drill a well costs $5 million (Sh700 million), it is a huge saving. Silali is avery productive area” said Davis Chirchir, Cabinet Secretary Energy and Petroleum.
“We should be going to tender, to invite companies to convert the steam to power by next year,” said the CS, adding the IPPs that would put up power plants at the Baringo-Silali fields would selling electricity to Kenya Power at between six and seven US cents (between Sh8 and Sh10) per unit. This is the cost for the power producers and is before taxes and levies as well as pass through costs such as fuel and forex adjustments are loaded on the power bill
“When the wells are capped, the steam is fuel that is not working for us and yet it is already available. So we will be bringing in the new investments to go to the next frontier of converting the steam to power. Ketraco will also be looking at evacuation so we will be building a transmission network out of these fields.”
GDC has been derisking the fields by way of exploring and drilling wells in areas that show high potential. It did the same in Menengai and parts of Olkaria.
Since it was established about 13 years ago, GDC by bearing the high capital investment for exploring and drilling wells and then inviting other firms to put plants, it has accelerated development of geothermal. Power generation through geothermal stood at around 200MW in 1998 when GDC was formed. At the moment, about of the 950MW geothermal installed capacity is generated using steam from GDC wells.
Pail Ngugi chief executive GDC said the firm plans to develop the Baringo-Silali fields in phases, with the first phase expected to produce 300MW – 100MWe each from the three fields of Paka, Korosi and Silali.
Paka field, where most of the work has been done,is expected to start production of the first 100MW from Paka prospect by 2028.
“We are developing this project in phases and the first phase will produce 100MW. We have already drilled for the steam and what is next is power plant construction,” said Ngugi.
“We are doing a feasibility study and once this is done by early next year, we can now start seeking investors. Once we get the investors, we should have this project in place in the next three years. We are looking at 2027, latest 2028, we should be able to have power feeding the grid.”
“The cost of power from our projects is about seven US cents… if we can duplicate this cost of seven US cents over several other geothermal fields, we can actually bring the cost of power down.”
While the Energy Ministry is preparing to invite companies to place bids for building the power plants, earlier expectations were that Kengen would take over the fields derisked by GDC.
CS Chirchir said the government will take the firms that will sell electricity at the lowest price to the Kenyan consumers.
The Presidential Taskforce on Review of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) had in 2021 recommended that GDC should give Kengen the first right of refusal to the fields that it has already derisked.
This is on account of past experiences, where IPPs contracted to put up power plants at the Menengai geothermal fields have taken unnecessarily long to put up the power plants.
Three companies were selected in 2014 to put up power plants at Menengai fields and to date, only one firm has completed constructing its power plant. THe companies were to put up plants with a combined electricity generating capacity of 105MW or 35MW each.
GDC sunk the wells and built the steam gathering systems as a way to derisk the geothermal fields, making it easy for private sector players to gain entry in the country’s geothermal sector and increase power from the renewable resource.
“The taskforce found it inconceivable that Kengen did not qualify for projects tendered by GDC for stream conversion,” said the Taskforce in its report.
Chirchir noted that if Kengen could offer power at low prices, it would be given the go ahead. He however added that a competitive process would help in price discovery and the Kenyan consumer would be the ultimate beneficiary.
“But yes, if Kengen can deliver at four US cents, five US cents, we should do it. If somebody else can deliver at a better cost, why not,” he said but also explained that the company should be cautious not to be saddled with too much debt.
“Kengen is a government entity and investments will be determined by the state of its balance sheet. We do not want them to be overstretched,” he said, adding that Kengen’s room to borrow to finance such a project would be determined by how much borrowing room the government has. In certain instances, the state borrows for onlending to Kengen.
“We also borrow as a government for onlending to Kengen, to get concessional funding. If government’s headroom to borrow is in a good position, we should be able to do that and allow Kengen to take advantage of that low cost of money and get to reduce their cost of power
He also noted that Kenngen is also doing other projects including a solar power plant at the seven forks hydro power project that is expected to be among those that feed the grid at low cost. By Macharia Kamau, The Standard
King Charles 111 is to visit Kenya this autumn. The King has not travelled a lot after he became the King and now he is set to visit Kenya.
Kenya has a lot of historical connections to the UK. The late Queen Elizabeth 11 became the Queen when she was in Kenya. Prince William son of King Charles proposed to his wife Kate Middleton when both were in Kenya.
Her father King George VI died and according to the royal rules of ascending to the throne, when in the incumbent Queen or King dies, the next to the throne takes over right away wherever he or she may be.
Queen Elizabeth 11 ascended to the throne while in Kenya. UK only enjoyed her coronation. King Charles became the King when her mother died as he was next on the throne.
Informer East Africa is a UK based diaspora Newspaper. It is a unique platform connecting East Africans at home and abroad through news dissemination. It is a forum to learn together, grow together and get entertained at the same time.
To advertise events or products, get in touch by info [at] informereastafrica [dot] com or call +447957636854. If you have an issue or a story, get in touch with the editor through editor[at] informereastafrica [dot] com or call +447886544135.
We also accept donations from our supporters. Please click on "donate". Your donations will go along way in supporting the newspaper.
