East Africa Economic Report

The Electric train: underperforming  The race to modernize East Africa’s railways has triggered a hail of confusing false reports. So diffuse is the crap that, one could be forgiven for thinking our governments are run by buffoons who just sunk some US$ 20 billion down the drain.  The crap ranges from the absurd to the foolish. Here we intend to rubbish the crap. The root of this misinformation is twofold: the anti-Chinese sentiment in the West and propaganda by Tanzanian President Magufuli. Magufuli once lied that the Tanzanian Railway line will cost a million dollars a Kilometre. Most commentators on social media do not appear to have learned anything new since then.  Of course, government opacity on the projects also fed the misinformation. They should have answered such questions as; when was the decision to invest in high-speed railway lines made? Why? How and why were the contractors chosen? How were the costs determined, and by whom? How were the financiers chosen ...

Geothermal Plant: A reliable, cheap, and clean energy  source Technological advances in renewable sources of energy, coupled with policy-shift in favor of cheap energy, are putting the fossil fuels sector in jeopardy.  It is not just the industry whose future is bleak, but also economies that depend on Fossils fuels. The threat is compounded by the rapidly growing investment in green energy sources. The entry of electric or hybrid vehicles in the transport sector makes a bad situation worse. A number of reports reviewed by this publication show that Wind, Solar, and geothermal in that order, will play a significant role in electricity generation in the next 30 years. Experts say that fossil fuels, particularly Coal, will cease being an energy generation source in the next 30 years. In fact, projections show that by 2050, renewables- Wind, geothermal, and Solar- will have increased significantly to replace fossils as sources of energy. This is because, renewable energy source...