East Africa Economic Report

A Lithium-ion Battery AFRICA should leverage its abundant mineral and green energy wealth to lead in the fourth industrial revolution, experts say. And in this respect, the Democratic Republic of Congo should be the nerve center, they add.  The country is rich in mineral wealth and water. It is thus, suitable for the production of cathode precursor materials for Lithium-Ion batteries, a study has established.  The government has accepted a proposal to set up a Special Economic Zone for this purpose, we can report. Lithium-ion batteries power everything from your Mobile phone to Airplane batteries. Now that the world is shifting to clean energy to power cars, Lithium-Ion is also powering electric vehicles, EVs. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces 70 percent of the world's cobalt, the basic Mineral in Lithium-ion batteries. Cathode precursor materials are the intermediate material between cobalt and finished cathode material. Currently, precursor materials are produced...

  A wind power project: Increases power supply  and lower cost of electricity Economists and Engineers, at the conception of a project, begin with a theory of the potential benefits the project will engender to the project area. The benefits at that point are purely anecdotal but are feasible. They then move on to study the area’s characteristics, economic and physical, determine the size of the project service area, the population, and economic activities. The Project’s financial costs and pricing of the service come at the tail end of the study. For instance, at conception, a piped water project is justified on the strength of the economic, health, nutrition, and welfare benefits.  A road project is justified on ease of access to markets, faster travel time, and increased economic activity in the project area. All-weather roads generate more economic activity due to ease of access.  These activities are assigned monetary values which are compared to the financial...

Kenya's SGR build by China: Africa could do with a trans- Africa Railroad. The West has woken up to the reality that investment in infrastructure development is simply not for the private sector. The returns from such investments are way outside the private sector’s definition of returns.  For the private sector, returns are purely financial- profits and dividends. However, returns from infrastructure are both financial and economic. The financial returns count for little as economic returns outweigh the financial returns. Infrastructures are enablers of economic activity as they provide goods and services that raise the productivity - and profitability-of other sectors. That is why governments invest in infrastructure to catalyze robust economic growth. In the last month, the west has launched a total of US$1.5 trillion plans to invest in infrastructure. These are; the US$ 1.2 trillion Infrastructure Act in the US, and the $340 billion Global Gateway initiative launched last w...

T he Loiyagalan-Suswa High voltage transmission line: Salvaged by Chinese  The delivery of stillborn construction projects in Kenya by CMC Di Ravenna, Grupo Isolux Corsan, and Bechtel Engineering raises the question; why?  Why are Western Civil Engineering companies failing in East Africa? Why Is China succeeding? We eschew the propaganda and focus on Economics and attitude toward Africa for these are the elephant in the house.  Chinese and Western infrastructure investment Models differ. Even their attitude towards Africa is far apart.  In Chinese and Western European models, the public, through the government invests in infrastructure. The US on the other hand, allows the private sector, state governments, and the federal government to invest in infrastructure. This diffusion of responsibility is the reason why the US is suffering a severe case of rotting infrastructure. Although the Chinese and European Models are similar, how much we invest in Infrastr...