The Bank of Uganda (BoU) has increased the central bank rate for the third consecutive monetary policy committee by 50 basis points to 9.0 percent.
Michael Atingi-Ego, the BoU deputy governor, said: “The economy continues to face strong cost-push inflation pressures from the external environment, dry weather conditions and exchange rate depreciations amid weak domestic demand.”
The headline inflation --a measure of annual changes in the cost of living-- rose to 7.9 percent in July from 6.8 percent the previous month.
The spike in inflation saw the monetary policy committee increase the benchmark rate by a percentage point, the highest hike since 2018, in June and again in July.
Last month, BoU held its first unscheduled monetary policy committee meeting on the back of soaring commodity prices occasioned by supply chain disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Atingi-Ego said Friday that the central bank forecasts inflation to range between 7.0 percent and 7.4 percent for the rest of the year
The economy is projected to expand at between 2.5 percent to 3.0 percent, a slower pace compared to the earlier estimate of 4.5 percent to 5.0 percent this year.
“Overall, economic growth prospects have been dimmed further with increasing risks of a global recession, and weaker consumer and business sentiment as high inflation and commodity prices continue to erode households and business incomes and financial conditions tighten,” said Mr Atingi-Ego.
The monetary policy stance has seen the cost of funds rise as commercial banks increase lending rates, restricting private sector borrowing. By Nelson Naturinda, The East African.
Mr Mohamed Adow has been declared winner of the Wajir South parliamentary seat. Mr Adow is a renowned former Al Jazeera journalist who had run-ins with the authorities when he worked for the Doha-based media outlet.
In early January 2014, Mr Adow was expelled from South Sudan for reporting on the anti-government protesters’ advance on the capital Juba.
He produced a documentary that aired on Al Jazeera English on November 14, 2013, revealing a history of discrimination in Kenya since independence against ethnic Somalis in Northern Kenya.
The documentary came shortly after the Westgate attack in Nairobi.
Born and raised in Wajir County, Mr Adow said he witnessed first-hand the political and economic marginalisation of the region.
In another documentary that he made for Al Jazeera, “Not Yet Kenyan”, he returned to the region to see how its people had survived and started to prosper, only to find that Kenya's intervention in Somalia and the actions of Al-Shabaab were threatening to throw the region into turmoil again.
With over 15 years of experience in telling stories across Africa, Mr Adow filed exclusive reports for Al Jazeera about the Ogaden fighters who were battling to achieve an autonomous state in eastern Ethiopia.
“This election has been framed. It’s about ideas and long-lasting policies that will replenish the full potential of Wajir south in all its spheres. We are united on a common goal – a better and developed Wajir south,” he wrote on a social media platform.
He had urged residents of Wajir South to play their part by coming out to vote.
On Tuesday, voters indeed turned up and elected the journalist as their MP, giving him 13,990 votes.
His closest competitor, Mohamud Muhumed Sirat, received 7,545 votes.
“This evening I attended a football tournament in Habaswein town and realised the boys need someone to uplift them in showcasing their untapped talents,” Mr Adow (ODM) said in another post on social media.
“I pledged to them [that] as their MP, my office will have a cordial relationship with football Academies in Europe and other developed countries to nurture these young men.”
He pledged to base his political leadership on effective development, improving education and uplifting voters’ living standards.
Mr Adow was vying for the first time but he beat strong opponents, including the incumbent Mohamud Sheikh Mohammed, who received 4,293 votes.
Others were Dekow Noor Ali (53 votes), Khalif Abdi Ali (654), Mohamed Kahiye Bullet (1,274), Abdullahi Yussuf Noor (7,317) and Mohamud Muhumed Sirat (7,545).
Mr Adow started his media career as a Garissa correspondent for the Daily Nation in 1996. He later joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Nairobi and Ethiopia as a World Service Correspondent.
In 2006, he joined Qatar-based Al Jazeera as Africa correspondent before he was transferred to Doha as a world correspondent in Africa, the Middle East and Europe in 2017. By Manase Otsialo & Edwin Kipsang, Daily Nation
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga speaking to Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka at a past event. FILE
Former Vice President, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, played an important role in boosting the numbers of former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, in the August 9 presidential vote.
According to Forms 34B uploaded on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) portal, Kalonzo's three counties of Ukambani delivered a total of 769,422 votes to the former Prime Minister's basket.
The data, which represents 75 per cent of the total votes cast in the region, was derived from 22 Form 34Bs representing all the 22 constituencies in the three Ukambani counties - Makueni, Kitui and Machakos.
Raila defeated his main competitor, Deputy President William Ruto, with a wide margin. The latter garnered a total of 242,187 votes in the three counties.
Wiper Leader Kalonzo Musyoka signs the condolence book during the burial of Johnson Muthama's daughter on Monday, May 2, 2022.
FILE
According to the data, the former Prime Minister got the most votes from Machakos county which contributed a total of 304,830 votes. This is despite Raila and Kalonzo's fallout with the county's governor, Alfred Mutua.
In Makueni, Raila got 229,187 votes while in Kitui, he received 235,408 votes.
Constituency-wise, the former Prime Minister gained the most from Mbooni Constituency in Machakos County (50,649) followed by Machakos Town (50,114) and Makueni Constituency (48,774).
Out of the 1,699,724 registered voters in the three counties, 1,030,292 individuals turned up to vote representing a 60 per cent turnout. 8,924 votes were, however, spoilt.
Machakos governor candidate Nzioka Waita conceded defeat during a press conference. [John Muia, Standard]
Former State House Chief of Staff Nzioka Waita has conceded defeat in the Machakos gubernatorial race.
His main rival for the Machakos governor seat is former Transport and Infrastructure Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) Wavinya Ndeti, running on a Wiper Party ticket.
Addressing journalists on Friday, August 12, Waita congratulated Ndeti and wished her team the best.
By the time Waita conceded defeat, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) had not yet announced the winner of the Machakos gubernatorial race.
"We are taking this opportunity to formally concede this election and to pass a message to the people of Machakos [County] that we are grateful for the support they gave us.
Election irregularities claims
"We are grateful they came out to vote in large numbers. To the team that will take over, we wish them all the best," he said.
Waita, however, alleged that the Machokos election was marred by irregularities.
"A number of presiding officers had already taken sides and objections noted by our team was not taken into account.
"Our opponents stormed the polling centres in the middle of the night intimidating the people counting and non of these objections were taken into account," Nzioka lamented.
On February 9, Waita officially resigned as Chief of Staff to focus on his Machakos Governor quest. He and his running mate, Florence Mwangangi, had promised to revive the county’s fortunes by fighting poverty and corruption. The former public servant now says that his ticket ideas carried the day but their opponent's tactics had the way.
The Machokos governor seat had four candidates. Apart from Waita and Ndeti, the other two are Johnson Muthama, United Democratic Alliance (UDA) Chairman and Rose Mulwa who was running under the Empowerment and Liberation Party (ELP). By Stephanie Wangari, The Standard
The energy and climate goals that Western governments, the United Nations, and other organizations are pushing on Africa constitute a crippling blow to its economies. As the least developed region, Africa should unequivocally prioritize economic development. One would think that amid energy poverty in Africa, Western governments and “development” institutions would prioritize energy security for African countries over energy transition.
African countries must have reliable, abundant, and cheap energy (e.g., fossil fuels) to accelerate economic development. Fossil fuels power economies and people’s lives. To deny these countries the possibility of developing with fossil fuels by imposing climate goals that the Western world itself fails to achieve is hypocritical. And malicious.
Climate Alarmism and Energy Hypocrisy
Many environmental and energy experts acknowledge the imperative to address climate change but reiterate that there is no need for apocalyptic alarmism. Bjørn Lomborg is one such expert. In his book False Alarm, he makes the case that climate panic costs trillions of dollars and hurts people in undeveloped countries disproportionately. He warns:
With 194 signatories, the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the most expensive pact in human history, is likely to incur costs of some $1–$2 trillion per year by 2030. With ever more nations making promises to go carbon neutral over the next decades, these costs could escalate to tens of trillions of dollars annually in the coming years.
Any response to climate change will cost money (if addressing the problem made money, doing so wouldn’t be contentious and we’d already be doing it). If a relatively low-cost policy could fix most of the problem, that could be money well spent. However, it turns out that the Paris Agreement in its best-case scenario will achieve just one percent of what the politicians have promised (keeping temperature rises to 1.5°C (2.7°F)), and at huge cost. It is simply a bad deal for the world.
Worse still, like most governments, African governments are technically insolvent and thus dependent on systemic aid (i.e., loans and grants) to stay afloat. Africa’s tax burdens are rather heavy already. More debt, deficit spending, and heavier taxes further damage Africa’s economies. Fiat money printing cannot help either. In short, African governments cannot afford Western/UN-imposed climate and energy transition goals.
Another such voice is Michael Shellenberger, a veteran environmentalist and author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. Shellenberger has penned a letter in which, on behalf of all environmentalists, he apologizes for the false climate scare. A part of the letter reads:
On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30. But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.
Between 2000 and 2019, Germany grew renewables from 7 percent to 35 percent of its electricity. And as much of Germany’s renewable electricity comes from biomass, which scientists view as polluting and environmentally degrading, as from solar. Of the 7,700 new kilometers of transmission lines needed, only 8 percent have been built, while large-scale electricity storage remains inefficient and expensive. “A large part of the energy used is lost,” the reporters note of a much-hyped hydrogen gas project, “and the efficiency is below 40% … No viable business model can be developed from this.”
Meanwhile, the 20-year subsidies granted to wind, solar, and biogas since 2000 will start coming to an end next year. “The wind power boom is over,” Der Spiegel concludes.
All of which raises a question: if renewables can’t cheaply power Germany, one of the richest and most technologically advanced countries in the world, how could a developing nation like Kenya ever expect them to allow it to “leapfrog” fossil fuels?
Though Germany may be one of the most severely affected countries in the developed world, the energy crisis is undoubtedly global. As such, Germany, the US, China, and other countries are looking to increase coal-fired power generation to mitigate the crisis. In the US, the Biden administration chokes off domestic fossil fuel production but asks Saudi Arabia to increase its own output. Likewise, Europe is looking to African and other countries to secure access to natural gas as the continent moves away from Russian energy.
So, the developed West is looking to fossil fuels to solve its energy problems, but undeveloped Africa should transition to solar and wind?
This brings us to the hypocrisy part. Lomborg wrote:
The developed world’s response to the global energy crisis has put its hypocritical attitude toward fossil fuels on display. Wealthy countries admonish developing ones to use renewable energy. Last month the Group of Seven went so far as to announce they would no longer fund fossil-fuel development abroad. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are begging Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are spending big on African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the nation will more than double its exports.
Meanwhile, South Africa is getting money from Western countries to phase out coal while the same Western countries look to increase coal-fired electricity generation. The display of hypocrisy is blatant and will severely undermine Africa’s economic development. But though Western meddling has been harmful, if today African economies are still undeveloped and in a precarious state—over fifty years since “independence,” Africans should look at the leadership, or the lack thereof, as the ultimate culprit.
Energy Transition? Not Exactly
In theory, there is an energy translation happening. In reality, no such thing is taking place. Today’s global energy crisis conclusively demonstrates that the world desperately needs more, not less, fossil fuels. Consider the case of biomass, the first energy source used by humans. Despite tremendous advancements in technology and the existence of coal, oil, and natural gas, biomass is still part of today’s energy mix. This being the case, it does not make sense even to talk about phasing out fossil fuels, which meet almost 80 percent of the world’s energy needs. To think otherwise is absurd.
There is no such thing as an energy transition happening. What we do have is energy source accumulation. Humanity started with biomass and over time added coal, hydro, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar. Today we can use these energy sources combined. Not exactly a transition.
A transition from fossil energy to wind and solar is unattainable for material, technological, and environmental reasons, among others. All existing wind and solar farms’ combined energy output does not even supply 5 percent of the world’s energy needs, yet their environmental harm is already noticeable. For example, West-funded wind farms in Kenya threaten birdlife, including endangered species. Same in the US, where wind turbines have been killing eagles and other rare birds.
Only one energy source can enable humanity to phase out coal, oil, and natural gas. And that is nuclear. Nuclear power can provide clean, reliable, abundant, and cheap energy for everyone and for the foreseeable future. So, if we are serious about net-zero emissions and environmental protection, we must embrace nuclear power. Yes, it is safe, and can be made even safer.
Before I was born, Angola already was mired in severe and chronic energy problems. I am gravitating toward forty years of age, and Angola is still mired in these problems.
The government controls the production and distribution of energy products and services through companies that it wholly or partially owns. Undeniably, the government has failed to provide Angolans with reliable, abundant, and cheap energy goods and services. Angola’s government is not the only African government that failed to deliver energy prosperity to its people. Energy woes are entrenched across the continent. Even in South Africa, Africa’s most developed energy state, the energy situation is going from bad to worse.
African governments should finally step aside, which is the least they could do after decades of accumulated policy failures, and let free enterprise and free trade reign in energy production and distribution. Anyone able and willing to produce, distribute, and sell energy goods and services should be free to do so. The onerous mountains of regulations and bureaucratic measures must be removed.
Politicians failed to deliver energy prosperity. Now politicians should have humility and let markets perform their economic miracle. The free market is the fastest and most effective approach to making African societies sustainably energy rich.
Conclusion
Climate change is real. And so are climate alarmism, ecocolonialism, and Western energy hypocrisy. Environmental and energy policies based on pseudoscience and exaggerated reports are pushing even advanced economies such as Germany and California toward energy precarity and potential blackouts. But that pales in comparison to the harm ecocolonialism can do, and in fact does, to African economies and lives. Still, however hypocritical and malicious Western regimes may be, the responsibility for energy abundance and economic development lies entirely with Africa’s decision-makers. Mises Wire
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