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East Africa

By James Opondo 

Match fixing is a menace that has plagued Kenyan local sports for years. The vice came to fore in March 12th this year, when authorities arrested 3 suspects as they tried to fix a Kenya Premier League match pitting Nairobi City Stars against Sofapaka Football Club. 

The trio Akhiad Kubiev who is a Russian, Ugandan Bernard Nabende and Kenyan Martin Munga were arrested in Nairobi following an operation involving police and footballers attached to Kenya premier league side Nairobi City Stars. The three had allegedly promised players and their manager some Kshs 1.8 million to manipulate the league match against Sofapaka on march 10th this year. The interesting bit is in the varied opinions among the Kenyan public on the arrest of match fixing suspects. 

Festo Omukoto who in 2020 was among the four locally based players banned by the world football governing body FIFA from/for taking part in match fixing was key to the police operation as he was the link to the fixers. Omukoto explained that the fixers engaged him for one month asking him to connect them with City Stars players. 

Match fixing ruined my career and continues to destroy our football. I did not want the players to go through what I underwent,” said Omukoto. 

Speaking during the raid, the Nairobi City Stars CEO Patrick Korir said that when he was contacted by Omukoto about the matter, he called the police after organizing with seven of his players to lay a trap for the fixers. 

I have spoken about it before but people take it (match fixing being rampant in FKF-PL) for granted. I am glad we can now put faces to the noise we have been making,” said Korir. 

Let me take it back a little bit because this incident is not the first in Kenya. Why is it rampant and how is FIFA dealing with the issue of match fixing that is killing the sports? The argument is Kenyan footballers have become so vulnerable to match fixing for just one reason- Kenyan football does not pay. Those taking this direction are somehow right because football clubs in Kenya never pay their players in time or sometimes the players plus staff go for months without pay. This results in players going hungry and some failing to pay their rent. 

Without food on the table, most of these players who entirely depend on their monthly salaries and bonuses from the clubs would simply and happily throw away a match for some extra money. Kenyans generally fancy corruption. Graft is a vice that you can simply put to someone in an argument and they tell you, its normal. The bad news about the vice is that it is here to stay so for as long as these players will get the opportunity to fix a match to be paid, they will simply do it as we are students of our leaders. 

Let’s go back to the trio fixers who were nabbed by the police in Nairobi. They were released on a Kshs 300,000 bond with two sureties of a similar amount. But what are the FIFA rules? As stated in its Statutes, FIFA’s objectives include “preventing all methods or practices, such as corruption, doping or match manipulation, which might jeopardise the integrity of matches, competitions, players, officials and member associations or give rise to abuse of association football.“ The only thing FIFA does is to ban for life or for a period but this as many argue will no help in ending the vice. Various stakeholders in Kenya are now asking the national assembly to consider match fixing a criminal offense. 

Most of the matches never make it to the television screens. There are mummers that this lack of visibility may silently abet match fixing even among compromised referees. With the fixers on the offensive, cash starved players and corrupt authorities who are ever ready for a bribe; it may take years or ever forever to purge match fixing from Kenyan pitches because of the wide net of cartels who yield to the crime.

Kenyan couple, Gideon Mbatha Mutuka, 43, and Ruth Mulisa Wambusa, PHOTO| COURTESY

By JULIUS MBALUTO 

A Kenyan Couple was among the four individuals who lost their lives after a reckless driver entered the freeway in the wrong direction causing a fatal accident which involved many vehicles.

Gideon Mbatha Mutuku, 43 and Ruth Mulisa Wambusa lived in Lake Elsinore and they lost their lives following the accident which happened at 71 Freeway in Chino Hill, USA. The accident involved six vehicles which collided after a reckless driver entered the freeway the wrong side and the high speed of collision caused some vehicles to burst into flames.  

The Southbound side of 71 Freeway was shut for over 8 hours. 

Bank of Baroda in Kampala Uganda. PHOTO | NMG

Shareholders of Uganda’s Bank of Baroda are this week expected to vote on a rights offer meant to raise the lender’s capital base and be on the right side of financial regulations imposed three months ago.

Anne Tumwesigye Mbonye, Bank of Baroda company secretary, in a notice to shareholders, said the lender has opted to float 15 million bonus shares in rights offer to raise the Ush150 million ($39,900) at a ratio of 1:5 ratio priced at $0.0026 each.

The proposed cash infusion is subject to shareholders’ approval during the annual general meeting on March 23.

The move came just three months after Uganda’s Finance Minister Matia Kasaija signed a statutory instrument increasing minimum capital for banks by 500 per cent, from $6.67 million to over $40 million.

matia

Uganda's Finance Minister Matia Kasaija. PHOTO | COURTESY

 

The idea, according to the Bank of Uganda (BoU), is to prevent commercial banks from falling off the cliff when economic shocks hit their clients.

According to the new rules, regulated micro financiers’ paid-up capital also increased to $6.6 million from $267,636.

The new capital requirement has thrown a spanner in Uganda’s banking sector works. The industry has reported one exit — Afriland First Bank last year after 16 months in the market.

Top Finance Bank was bought by Djibouti-based Salaam African Bank after the original owners failed to infuse capital. Orient Bank was acquired by I&M Group for the same reason.

Regional convergence

Uganda last revised the paid-up capital for commercial banks in 2010 while that for credit institutions and deposit-taking institutions was last revised in 2004 and 2003 respectively, according to the BoU.

“The increase in paid-up capital is long overdue and is intended to match the dynamism in the economy, incentivize shareholder commitment, and enable institutions to withstand shocks and to converge with regional peers among whom Uganda effectively has the lowest paid-up capital,” Tumubweine Twinemanzi, the director in charge of supervision at BoU said.

The new rules follow trends in the region where some banks collapsed after reporting bad loans.

Read: Africa’s risk of debt piles as countries fight inflation

In 2018, Rwanda raised its paid-up capital requirement to Rwf20 billion from five billion francs. Kenya has also targeted both commercial banks and deposit-taking cooperative societies.

An earlier move, in 2016, however by Kenya’s Treasury to increase the minimum capital requirement for commercial banks from KSh1 billion ($7.69 million) to KSh5 billion ($38.43 million) was rejected with lawmakers arguing it would kill competition and make it difficult for small banks to grow. By KABONA ESIARA, The East African

Forty-three Facebook content moderators in Kenya are suing the social media site's parent company Meta for unfair dismissal.

The moderators say they lost their jobs with Sama, a Kenya-based firm contracted to moderate Facebook content, for organising a union, the Reuters news agency reports.

They also say they were blacklisted from applying for the same roles at another outsourcing firm, Majorel, after Facebook switched contractors.

In January, 260 content moderators working at Facebook's moderation hub in Nairobi were told they would be made redundant by Sama, the outsourcing firm which has run the office since 2019, said Foxglove, a technology rights group which is supporting the lawsuit.

"The redundancy being undertaken is unlawful because no genuine nor justifiable reason was given for the redundancy," the moderators said in their court petition.

Meta is yet to comment on the matter.

Last month, Meta filed an appeal in Kenya challenging a ruling which said it could be sued even though it has no official presence in the East African country. The New Times

A wellness-based health system can only work if it is owned and driven by individuals in how they live their daily lives.[iStockphoto]

In Africa, primary healthcare (PHC) is failing too many people, especially girls and women, who die while giving birth.

A tragic case in point is Aisha (not her real name), who lost her life at the age of 22 years while giving birth at home because she couldn’t get transport to a health facility 56 km away.

Her newborn son, Jamal, is now at risk of dying from preventable diseases like malnutrition and malaria before his fifth birthday. 

According to the Global Monitoring Report on tracking universal health coverage (UHC) 2021 by World Health Organisation and World Bank, access to PHC in Africa ranges from 20 per cent to 59 per cent and averages at 48 per cent.

This means that 615 million people in Africa will require help receiving health services when and where they seek them. Africa’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that effective leadership, robust policies and guidelines, and an engaged population can move the continent towards UHC.

However, a shift is needed for UHC to be truly universal, from health systems designed around diseases and institutions to those designed for people and with people.

Amref Health Africa and Dalberg recently convened experts to discuss people-centred health systems redesign. They propose a framework of four bold categories of actions to power the journey to UHC through people-centred redesign of health systems. 

They call this the ‘LIFE’ framework: Authentic leadership by Africa’s health experts, strengthening Africa’s health and economic institutions; reforming health financing systems to support people-centred health care; and empowering communities to foster ownership and trust in the health system.

Authentic leadership

The LIFE framework is an opportunity to breathe life into Africa’s health systems. The first step is authentic leadership, where African professional associations, experts, and civil society organisations demonstrate authentic leadership for excellence.

This is done by applying their knowledge, skills, and influence to pursue effective health policies and scalable PHC systems strengthening programs.

For example, African governments must promote preferential procurement of locally manufactured essential drugs, vaccines, and medical equipment, which is the 10th lever. 

Several countries in sub-Saharan Africa have emulated these leadership levers for change. A good example is Ethiopia’s expansion of primary health care over the past 15 years.

The second step is to invest in strengthening African health and economic institutions, making sure that Africa’s issues remain visible and prioritised on the global health agenda. Political commitment and action are crucial to improving people’s health, including demonstrated and visible leadership from heads of state and governments.

African governments must develop strong national institutions with a full legal mandate to address their most pressing needs, including UHC and specific high-impact issues such as teenage pregnancy, non-communicable diseases (including cancer), and epidemic preparedness. Thirdly, financing health systems should be reformed to support people-centred healthcare.

This means increasing taxation efficiency, investing in human capital, including women and young people as Africa’s economic backbone, increasing domestic financing for health, reforming public finance management systems to reduce operational inefficiencies, and incentivising investments in health-related industries, including local manufacturing.

Finally, we must restore communities’ ownership and trust in the health system, ensuring they are at the centre of health systems. Governments, professional associations, and civil society must promote structures that ensure the community has the most meaningful say in health system development.

A wellness-based health system can only work if it is owned and driven by individuals in how they live their daily lives.

This means providing the population with information that creates a high level of health literacy and empowers people to make lifestyle choices that maintain and promote individual and community health and wellness.

In conclusion, the LIFE framework is a potential game-changer for Africa’s health systems. It is time for governments and stakeholders to prioritise people-centred health systems and empower individuals to take charge of their health.

We can create a more equitable and sustainable health system that benefits all by fostering a culture of health literacy and engagement. By Githinji Gitahi and Ndirangu Wanjuki, The Standard

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