The continuous increase in counterfeit and unlicensed products like alcoholic and illicit brews in circulation in Kenya is denying the country over Sh30 billion in annual revenue, a report by the Office of the Auditor General has revealed.

The auditor also says that the country has been losing over Sh40 billion in taxes annually due to the prevalence of counterfeit goods in the country. 

Illicit brews

The auditor blames the practice on corruption and inefficiencies at the Anti-Counterfeit Authority (ACA).

The sale of illicit brews has been a menace which has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of youths in many parts of the country. 

Research by the ACA names China as the lead exporter of counterfeits to Kenya involving fast-moving goods such as phones, sound equipment, cables, clothing and automobile spare parts.

“Most of the goods are of inferior quality and are a threat to the health of the people and the environment,” states the report which is currently before parliament.

Local manufacturers and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) owners, states the report, lose over Sh6.5 billion due to weak enforcement of the law and regulations by ACA, its staff integrity issues and the authority’s lack of physical verification of destroyed goods.

“Counterfeit trade causes economic sabotage as the government and IPR owners lose revenue, unfair competition from counterfeit products, tax avoidance, illicit imports and dumping that leads to a reduction in market share,” the audit says.

The audit covered Nairobi headquarters, Mombasa, Kisumu and Eldoret Regional Offices as well as Namanga and Busia border points. 

A report on the economic impact of counterfeiting by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the audit says, shows that counterfeit products are made to closely imitate the appearance of the original product to mislead consumers.

This includes the unauthorised production and distribution of products that are protected by IPRs such as copyrights, trademarks and trade names.

The audit named software, music recordings, motion pictures, luxury goods, fashion clothes, sportswear, perfumes, toys, motor vehicle spare parts and accessories, and pharmaceuticals as the most hit industries. By Anthony Mwangi, People Daily

Pressure groups in Tanzania are pushing the National Electoral Commission to drop district directors and other public servants from election supervision duties.

Leaders of political parties, civil society and religious groups and lawyers lobby said public servants, mainly district executive directors, town directors, municipal directors, city directors, ward executives and teachers, should not serve as returning officers in civic and general elections.

The Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) told the government to present aBill when parliament resumes sessions in February to govern this year’s local government elections.

“We propose that the Electoral Commission hire its own staff from the ward, district, regional, and national levels,” LHRC executive Director Anna Henga said.

The ACT Wazalendo chairman Zitto Kabwe added his voice to the debate, saying the electoral body should hire its own staff to conduct the elections. They were speaking at a forum organised by the Council of Tanzania Political Parties in Dar es Salaam to seek public opinions on election related Bills introduced Parliament in November last year.

The Bills are the National Electoral Commission Bill 2023, the Political Parties Affairs Laws (Amendment) Bill 2023, and the Presidential, Parliamentary, and Local Government Elections Bill 2023.

And on Thursday, Chadema secretary-general John Mnyika said that his party also stands against administration of elections by government servants. District council directors are appointed by the president, who is also the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party leader and a candidate in the presidential contest.

Mr Mnyika said Tanzania needs an “independent electoral commission” that would manage elections without interference from the government.

Civic United Front (CUF) chairman Prof Ibrahim Lipumba, while expressing his opposition to the use of public servants in the electoral process, alleged that in the 2020 polls, council directors were directed to ensure that the ruling CCM party won.

“We have gone through a period where politicians will tell district council directors that ‘if I give you fuel and a salary, make sure that my party doesn’t lose the election,” Prof Lipumba said.

Veteran politician John Cheyo wants the electoral commission to have independent staff across the cadres.

Mr Cheyo recalled incidents in the 2020 election, where council directors employed underhand tactics disqualify or disadvantage opposition candidates. - APOLINARI TAIRO, The EastAfrican

Rwandan asylum seekers have spoken of the fear of persecution they face from their own country as an i investigation reveals the UK has granted six people the right to stay since signing the controversial migrant deal.

Rishi Sunak’s bill returns to Parliament next week as the Government tries to deem Rwanda a safe country in order for the deportation deal to go ahead. 

An i investigation, however, has revealed that six people from Rwanda have been granted asylum since ministers signed the deportation deal with the country in April 2022.

Here, i speaks to two Rwandans who left the country to settle in the UK prior to the deal, and who still receive anonymous death threats if they dare to speak out.

‘I still receive death threats for speaking out against Rwanda’

By Poppy Wood

Prudentienne Seward still faces threats and intimidation for speaking out against the Rwandan regime almost 28 years after she came to the UK as an asylum seeker.

As recently as last year, she received a number of ominous phone calls from a withheld number. The voice at the other end of the line, whom she believes to be connected to the Rwandan Government, repeatedly told her to stop spreading claims Rwanda that “is not safe”.

“They were threatening me [that] they will kill me – they will kill my son,” she told i. “They said ‘if you don’t stop your activity you will be perished and your son will be perished. Why can’t you be silent?’”

Prudentienne was granted asylum in the UK on 6 April 1996, arriving with little other than her 11-month old baby clinging to her side. Five days earlier, on 1 April that year, her husband was shot dead after being ambushed by bandits in Angola.

The couple were in the country as part of their work for Oxfam, and had fled there after escaping Rwanda during the genocide.

Exactly two years earlier, on 6 April 1994, violence erupted across the country. Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was assassinated after rebels shot down his plane, triggering a state of chaos, before armed Hutu militias began a killing spree of the Tutsi ethnic group.

Prudentienne’s family split up in the hope of avoiding being killed all together. Her father was from the Tutsi ethnic group and her mother came from a family that was mostly Hutu.

Prudentienne sought shelter in the nearby city of Butare, before eventually escaping the country through the help of aid agencies. When she returned to her hometown several months later to try and find her family, she was told that both her mother and sister had been killed by Tutsi forces.

As many as 800,000 people are thought to have been killed in the 100 days of militia violence in the country between 7 April and 15 July 1994, which ended when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) declared a military victory. Rwanda has been governed as a de facto one-party state by the RPF since then, with former commander Paul Kagame as president since 2000.

In the years since, Prudentienne has made it her mission to speak out about the violence she witnessed in Rwanda from the relative safety of the UK. In her view, little has changed over that time. 

“Rwanda is not a safe country,” she told i. “The [Rwandan] people themselves can’t speak up, the country doesn’t even have any journalists now.”

Prudentienne thinks she would be imprisoned or killed “within a month” if she were to return to Rwanda, and that continuing threats against her show just how unsafe the country is.

“I would be sent to jail, or killed in a ‘car accident’, or by ‘food poisoning,’” she said.

[“The UK Government] can’t claim that Rwanda is a safe country. It’s not safe at all. I was shocked when I heard about the Rwanda deal – it’s a shocking and shameful project.

“Rwanda is a country that doesn’t even care about its own people – and then you’re sending other human beings there? You’re making a double suffering for people, because they’re coming here thinking they’ll be safe, and then you’re sending them to a country where they’ll be shut down.”  By Zoe Drewett, The I

Africa’s vibrant telco sector is set for a bumper year in 2024 as it expands operations and broadens service offerings to meet the needs of an increasingly digital-savvy customer base.  

Industry projections estimate the Africa telco sector will grow by $2.24-billion between 2020 and 2024, with longer-term growth expected to be powered by the rollout of high-speed 5G connectivity and a growing suite of complementary services, specifically in the financial services sector.  

In conversation with telco executives throughout East, West and Southern Africa over the past few weeks, a number of common challenges have emerged. Telcos are seeking to safeguard current revenue streams through improved downstream visibility, especially over their B2B partners.   

At the same time, a slew of new customer-facing services and innovations hold the promise for greater profitability over the long term. This will require bold action - if telcos are not willing to take risks to drive greater innovation, there are inevitably new upstarts that will, claiming market and revenue share in the process.  

As African telcos try to strike a balance between higher profitability and better revenue protection, these are the key trends they should take note of in 2024:  

Digitalisation drives greater visibility over B2B channels  

In telco markets across the continent, from Kenya to Ivory Coast to Tanzania and Swaziland, operators rely heavily on dealers or resellers to drive sales and service customer needs. But a lack of digitalisation

has left many telcos with little visibility over their B2B channels, creating challenges with inventory management, revenue projections and cost management.  

The emergence of new technology platforms and tested systems to provide greater downstream efficiency and visibility will transform telcos' ability to leverage their dealer channels for strategic advantage. While there may be some cultural resistance to greater digitalisation, telcos could use incentives - such as discounts - to get dealers on board.   

This may also unlock significant revenue opportunities for B2B partners who can leverage digital capabilities to utilise a broader range of products and services and better meet customer needs.  

Innovation powers improved customer experiences 

Once their digitalisation efforts are complete, telcos can enable a far richer suite of products and services, driving higher levels of customer experience. This can take the form of tailored financial services such as insurance products or mobile money, as well as emerging innovations such as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL).  

The key is to integrate these services at the point of sale to ensure a quick and seamless customer experience. Considering the growing regulatory requirements in several African countries, telcos should

ensure their customer-facing technology can meet KYC requirements to enable the delivery of new services.  

Ideally, telcos should seek point of sale solutions that boast efficient transactional flows and that can cater to the varied operational requirements of Africa's telco industry, with a rich list of preloaded features and modules. 

 eSIM adoption hits its stride 

While there are still holdouts in all African markets, most consumers are shifting away from feature phones to more function-rich smartphones. Industry data indicates feature phone volumes will decline from 66.3 million in 2019 to only 43.1 million by 2028.  

The adoption of smartphones will also speed up the rollout of eSIMs, which hold significant benefits for telcos and their efforts at delivering a richer suite of value-added services to their subscriber base.  

 This growth will be driven mainly by a younger user base hungry for access to social media platforms and the benefits of Africa's burgeoning e-commerce sector. Expect telcos to run extensive promotional

campaigns on social media to lure younger users on to smartphones, from where they can deliver a rich suite of services to drive greater revenue and profitability.  Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Itemate Solutions.