Author: Khusoko

Mwananchi Credit Limited has extended the repayment period for loans taken by civil servants and teachers to eight years. The secured credit lender says this is part of efforts to ease the financial burden on this group of borrowers as Covid-19 continues to adversely affect people’s finances.  Civil servants and Teachers Service Commission (TSC) members will now have up to 96 months (eight years) to pay their loans, a major relief from the previous six years (72 months). Civil servants and teachers access Mwananchi Credit loans through the salary check-off loan. “Civil servants have been the backbone of the nation…

Safaricom has launched an M-Pesa Bill Management service targeting schools, landlords, utilities and other businesses with repeat payments where they can present and receive pending payments from customers, and issue electronic receipts. For schools, the Bill Manager platform will enable management to customise the different type of fees such as tuition, lunch, transport, school trips among others, and also to send fee reminders to parents and guardians. Landlords and property agents can send rent payment reminders and reconcile any received payments.  For utility providers such as water and internet providers, the service will enable them to automatically bill their customers…

The Foundation partners with the Ministry of Education to distribute pads to needy girls from across the country At least 180,000 needy school-going girls will benefit from 3 months’ supply of sanitary towels donated by M-Pesa Foundation. The sanitary towel distribution drive is part of M-PESA Foundation’s Ksh 44 million menstrual hygiene programme launched in December 2020 as part of Safaricom’s 20th-anniversary celebrations. “Many girls are not able to access menstrual hygiene products with statistics indicating that 65 per cent of women and girls in Kenya cannot afford them while 42 per cent of school-going girls have never used sanitary…

Leading Insuretch for Africa’s smallholder farmers closes the latest round from TLcom Capital and Women’s World Banking  Capital will be used to help derisk Farmers across Africa and Asia Pula, a leading Agricultural technology that develops and deploys crops and livestock insurance, has raised $6 million in Series A funding from TLcom Capital and Women’s World Banking to scale up operations in the company’s existing 13 markets across Africa. Currently, Pula has impacted over 4.3mn farmers on the continent and the new funding will also help propel its expansion into Asia to power resilience and profitability for Asian smallholder farmers. …

The Kenyan Shilling traded within a range of 110.10  and 110.19 in the week ending Jan. 22, thus appreciating marginally by 0.1% to the dollar. “The Kenya Shilling remained relatively stable against major international and regional currencies during the week ending January 21. It exchanged at KSh 110.19 per US dollar on January 21, compared to KSh 109.97 per US dollar on January 14,” said the CBK in its Weekly Bulletin. The appreciation was due to higher dollar inflows from offshore investors into the local debt market. Analysts attribute this to improved investor sentiment for so-called frontier assets.  On a…

Kenya’s Ministry of Health says through the newly launched smart anti-epidemic robot technology to support frontline healthcare workers in the fight against COVID-19.  The technology is a collaboration between the Ministry of Health and ICT, Innovations and Youth Affairs, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Japanese Government  Named Tumaini, Jasiri and Shujaa, the Minister of Health, Mutahi Kagwe said  “They will assist in temperature screening, disinfection, communication of health messages and data capture.”  They will be deployed to the Kenyatta National Hospital and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.  Kagwe said the robots would fast track traveler clearance at airports since they have the capacity of screening the body temperature of…