East African Business Notifier

  Airtel Uganda’s latest financial results paint a clear picture, Ugandans are choosing data over voice calls, and the shift is transforming the telecom industry. In its half-year results for the period ending June 30, 2025, Airtel reported a 30.4% jump in data revenue to Ushs 525.7 billion, making up nearly half of all service revenues. Just a few years ago, voice calls were the telco cash cow. Today, they’ve taken a back seat to data bundles. This change is showing up not just in the number of new customers but also in how much data existing users are consuming. Airtel’s data subscribers grew by 25.9% to 7.5 million, while average usage per user climbed 22.6% to nearly 6GB per month. And the network is feeling the heat. Overall traffic surged 57.4%, forcing Airtel to accelerate its infrastructure rollout. Over the past six months, the company has added 176 new 4G sites, rolled out 1,793km of fibre, and installed 150 additional 5G sites to keep pace with demand. One striking metri...

Kaushik Basu ITHACA, NEW YORK – In a 2022 paper, I introduced an allegory I called the  Incarceration Game  – an academic exercise that explores how authoritarian leaders, when their popularity falters, consolidate power through increasingly oppressive tactics. My analysis drew inspiration from a 1948 paper on the so-called “ surprise test paradox ,” which showed how rational expectations can unravel under certain conditions. US President Donald Trump, grappling with waning public support, seems determined to follow this authoritarian playbook. The most striking example is the administration’s attempt to bring mortgage fraud charges against prominent critics – most notably Federal Reserve Board of Governors member  Lisa Cook , Democratic US Senator Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. At the  center of these efforts  is Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, a major Trump donor who now oversees the US mortgage industry. Naturall...

  T he water cycle has become increasingly erratic and extreme, swinging between deluge and drought, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It highlights the cascading impacts of too much or too little water on economies and society.   The  State of Global Water Resources report  says only about one-third of the global river basins had “normal” conditions in 2024. The rest were either above or below normal – the sixth consecutive year of clear imbalance.   2024 was the third straight year with widespread glacier loss across all regions. Many small-glacier regions have already reached or are about to passthe so-called peak water point - when a glacier's melting reaches its maximum annual runoff, after which this decreases due to glacier shrinkage.   The Amazon Basin and other parts of South America, as well as southern Africa were gripped by severe drought in 2024, whilst there were wetter-than-normal conditions in centra...

Gwen Mwaba CAIRO – There is no silver bullet for expanding trade and commerce in Africa – or anywhere else, for that matter. But we can say with certainty that trade finance forms the backbone of sustainable growth and economic revitalization on the continent.  It is critical for promoting the integration of African economies and drawing a line under postcolonial fragmentation, which is essential for enabling small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) to grow and diversify. By strengthening their ability to export, import, and invest with confidence, African countries can unlock their vast potential and bolster their resilience in an increasingly uncertain world.  The continent’s leaders have already taken steps toward achieving these goals. By the end of 2023, intra-African trade reached  $192.2 billion , up from $186.3 billion the previous year, partly owing to an increase in trade finance. That number is expected to rise with the continued implementation of the African C...

Mohamed Adow NAIROBI – When delegates from around the world convened in Bonn, Germany, last month for the 62nd session of the United Nations Climate Change Subsidiary Bodies (SB62), the specter of sovereign debt loomed large.  For African countries, in particular, debt is no longer a problem unfolding in parallel with escalating climate shocks and widening development deficits, but rather the key obstacle to effective crisis responses. Debt reform and climate finance are two sides of the same coin. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, African countries owe  $655 billion  in external debt, and debt-service payments have more than doubled since 2010, driven by rising interest rates and currency depreciation.  This year, the continent’s collective debt-service bill will amount to a whopping  $79 billion . In 2023, 34 African countries  spent more  on debt service than on health or education, let alone disaster relief or green infra...

Jayati Ghosh NEW DELHI – The world’s largest corporations now rival most governments – not only in terms of revenue and assets, but also in their ability to shape political outcomes. Their power is reinforced by the immense personal fortunes of billionaires, which enable them to wield disproportionate influence over public policies, laws, and regulations. Crucially, extreme concentrations of wealth and power could not have developed without the active support of policymakers, whether tacit or explicit. And because governments themselves create the legal, regulatory, and political environments in which these fortunes are built, they retain the authority to restrain, regulate, or even expropriate private wealth. The fact that they rarely do so does not reflect a lack of capacity, but a deliberate political choice. Consequently, being an oligarch is inherently precarious. Crony capitalism may grant enormous advantages, but it also carries built-in risks. Chief among them is political chan...