Customers will access loans of up to Sh3 million within a 48-hour turnaround period, facilitated through a new facility dubbed Wezesha Express.

The loans will be advanced at 13 percent interest rate and repaid within three years.

“The Wezesha Express is a new proposition we included because we know he customers need speed and efficiency. Customers will need to produce 12-month bank statements from any bank or M-Pesa transactions,” director of business banking at Absa Bank Kenya, Elizabeth Wasunna said.

Latest exchequer statistics indicate the Treasury has now taken up 77.8 percent of its full year net domestic borrowing target of Sh391.45 billion. Ideally, the prorated target for borrowing after seven months would be 58.3 percent or Sh273 billion.

That leaves the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), the government’s fiscal agent, with limited room to take in a maximum of Sh86.66 billion for the remainder five months from February under the gazetted domestic borrowing target.

Kenya is listed as having the highest number of tech hubs in Sub-Sahara Africa and second only to South Africa.

According to the latest mapping done by Global Systems for Mobile Communication Association (GSMA), South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco host the highest number of hubs in Africa. READ MORE.....

Date                Currency        Rate
        
24/02/2020    AE DIRHAM    27.5899
24/02/2020    STG POUND    130.9735
24/02/2020    KES / USHS    36.3583
24/02/2020    S FRANC    103.2003
24/02/2020    CHINESE YUAN    14.4135
24/02/2020    DAN KRONER    14.6546
24/02/2020    SA RAND    6.7211
24/02/2020    EURO    109.4606
24/02/2020    HONGKONG DOLLAR    13.0117
24/02/2020    KES / TSHS    22.8908
24/02/2020    CAN $    76.4196
24/02/2020    SINGAPORE DOLLAR    72.3544

This publication also matched the ranking released by unirank of top 200 universities.

University of Pretoria, University of Capetown and University of Witwatersrand took position 1, 2 and 3 respectively. University of Lagos, University of Nairobi and Cairo University are the only other universities from other regions in Africa in the top 10 apart from the South African region.

University of Nairobi is the only University from East Africa and Kenya that has been ranked.

This selection was done under the Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund (RSIF) by ICIPE. The objective of the RSIF project is to strengthen institutional capacity for quality and sustainable doctoral training, research and innovation in transformative technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) through capacity development for the operation and management of the Scholarship, Research and Innovation Fund and Provision of scholarship and Research Grants in the Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology fields.  

The reserves have fallen from a high of $8.94 billion (5.59 months of import cover) recorded on October 24, according to Central Bank data. In the absence of a major external debt issuance since the last Eurobond in May, CBK has depended on the normal market flows from diaspora remittances and exports to replenish its pile of hard currency.

Sterling Capital head of research Renaldo D’Souza said the decline is to be expected considering the huge jump triggered by the $2.1 billion Eurobond in May.

The push for review of the fees comes at a time when the drop in the number of students pursuing parallel degree programme courses, whose tuition charges are based on market rates, has hurt university finances.

This has forced the institutions to freeze hirings and slow down expansion plans as they struggle with huge debts.

“Discussions regarding the fee increment are ongoing…but it’s premature to say anything concrete has been agreed upon,” UFB acting chief executive Milton Njuki said on the sidelines of a regional forum on university education reforms in Nairobi.

Date                     Currency                           Mean                 Buy                      Sell

Barclays Bank of Kenya has completed over 80% of the projects necessary to rebrand into Absa. The bank, operating in 12 markets and about 1,000 branches is looking to finish the transition by June 2020.

By September 2019, the transition costs had hit KSh 910m. READ MORE....