Homabay County, Kenya, November 22, 2021—Pathfinder, in partnership with AMREF Health Africa (consortium lead), Pharma Access Foundation, and Action Aid Kenya, received 150,000,000 KES (US$1.3 million) from the M-Pesa Foundation to implement an integrated two-year program in Ndhiwa, Homabay County, Kenya. The project, Uzazi Salama, or “Safe Parenting” in Kiswahili, will strengthen the health system to increase access to and use of quality, high-impact reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (RMNCAH) services in Homabay County.

These RMNCAH services include: antenatal care; skilled delivery; postpartum services; nutrition services; immunizations; family planning services; and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). The project builds on lessons from the first iteration of Uzazi Salama, which was carried out in Kenya’s Samburu County.

“We thank the M-Pesa Foundation for this generous award that will allow us to improve and save the lives of mothers and their children in Homabay County, a region of Kenya with a significant number of maternal and newborn mortalities related to suboptimal health prevention and treatment services,” said Dr. Charles Otwori, who will lead the project on behalf of Pathfinder in Kenya. “This project will build on our legacy of work over the past 64 years in Kenya helping the government to strengthen the health system to offer integrated, quality, client-centered health services for mothers and children.”

Uzazi Salama seeks to:

• Increase demand for high-impact, quality RMNCAH services through targeted behavior change communications and gender-transformative approaches that empower women and engage men.
• Increase availability and delivery of high-impact, quality RMNCAH services at health facilities.
• Strengthen county health systems for delivery of high-impact, quality RMNCAH services.

The project will draw from Pathfinder’s experience implementing two projects in Kenya: the USAID-funded Afya Pwani project, which integrated RMNCAH, family planning, WASH, HIV, and nutrition activities in Kilifi County, and Health of People and Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin, an integrated health and environment project in Homabay county on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Uzazi Salama seeks to reach 200,000 community members in Homabay, including 50,000 women of reproductive age and 40,000 children under age 5, over the next two years. - Pathfinder International

The rising number of social impact projects using digital art to fundraise for charitable causes marks a powerful development in the nonfungible token (NFT) space. One such project leveraging technology for social good is Orica, an ethical funding platform supporting artists and social impact organizations, or SIOs, to create and sell NFTs.

Orica launched Thursday at the Malta AI & Blockchain Summit, or AIBC Malta, and announced its collaboration with an NGO to drop NFTs on its platform and use those funds to build a school in Uganda.

The school is in the Ssese Islands, an archipelago of 84 islands in Lake Victoria, Uganda. The NGO, Bbanga Project, is a charitable organization registered in Austria with NGO status in Uganda. This means that all the receipts are audited by the Viennese charity and tax authorities.

In an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, Orica founder Danial Nanaei said: “Seventy billion dollars of cryptocurrency moved through Malta after it became "Blockchain Island" so it doesn’t make sense that 4,400km away, Ssese Islands families struggle on less than a dollar a day. We decided to use the launch of our NFT platform at the Malta summit to start making positive change.”

Bbanga Project collaborated with German digital artist Mellowmann to release a collection of Uganda-inspired NFTs. Collectors of Mellowmann’s work include Dima Buterin, the so-called grandfather of Ethereum. His latest Ssese Islands NFT collection on Orica is called A Fairer World and was previewed by the school children before going on auction. Bbanga Project hopes to raise at least $6,815 (6,000 euros) and finish construction of the children’s school on the remote island of Bugala, according to Nanaei.

It all started when Nanaei and Sani Hayatbakhsh, Bbanga Project's founder, met in a cafe in Vienna in 2009. Having kept in touch since, Hayatbakhsh shared with Nanaei that even though the main hall of the Uganda school had been built this year thanks to funds from the City of Vienna, they were still short.

“Sales from the NFTs mean that we can finish the building,” explained Hayatbakhsh. “Two hundred more children will gain access to primary education. And of course, Bbanga Project children were excited to be part of a technology launch and see an international artist create artwork especially for them,” he added.

The A Fairer World NFT collection is now available on Orica. In addition to fundraising, Orica ultimately hopes to bring greater awareness to many important social causes. Later this year, Orica will release an initiative called Orica Projects to make such artist-SIO NFT collaborations standard practice on its platform. - ORNELLA HERNÁNDEZ, Cointelegraph

(Bloomberg) -- Tanzania’s central bank has placed a 10-year limit on the tenure of chief executives officers of banks and banned elected officials from serving on the boards of financial institutions. 

CEOs and board members of banks will need to stand down for three years after completing a decade in office before they can be reappointed, the Bank of Tanzania said. The aim of the new rules, published last week, is to “promote and maintain public confidence in banks and financial institutions” by improving corporate governance.

Banks will also be prohibited from offering commercial loans to employees on terms more favorable than those available to other regular borrowers. 

Tanzania has tightened regulatory oversight of banks in recent years in an attempt to safeguard stability of its financial services sector. The central bank is encouraging consolidation of banks and wants to lower bad loans to boost the growth of credit to the private sector. - Fumbuka Ng'Wanakilala, Bloomberg News