Ugandan bike-hailing startup, SafeBoda is reportedly exiting Nigeria.

According to Techpoint.Africa, SafeBoda wants to focus on “bringing the company to profitability by deepening its core transportation offering” in Uganda, its largest market.

Recall that SafeBoda also exited Kenya in November 2020, less than two years after expanding its services to the country.

The company said this was due to the negative effects of COVID-19 on its operations.

SafeBoda is reportedly exiting Nigeria because the “current state is not economically viable and unfortunately requires significant investment at this challenging time in the global economic landscape.”

Officially launched in Kampala, Uganda in 2017, SafeBoda claims to be upending the offline market for local motorcycles known as boda-bodas in Uganda and Okadas in Nigeria.

It launched in Ibadan, Nigeria, in December 2019 but began operations in March 2020.

This March, the company announced that it had completed over 3 million rides, and 50,000 deliveries with over 10,000 riders and 100,000 passengers.

In August 2022, SafeBoda announced a car-hailing service, SafeCar, in Kampala and one month after, it also launched in Ibadan, Nigeria.

It is, however, unclear at the moment whether its exit from Nigeria will also impact its car-hailing service.

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The current financial and economic uncertainty, as well as the rising cost of living, may lead policy makers, regulators and supervisors to postpone reforms that could improve their pensions systems. However, delaying needed reforms would put at risk the well-being of current and future pensioners. Policy makers should continue to improve pension systems, according to a new OECD report.

The OECD Pensions Outlook 2022 says that pension arrangements in which retirement savings are invested to accumulate assets that will finance pensions (asset-backed pension arrangements) have been growing in the last two decades in most OECD member countries. Total assets earmarked for retirement represented just over 100% of total OECD GDP at the end of 2021. These arrangements play a key role in diversifying the sources of retirement funding.

“Strong retirement systems will be important to protect the living standards of our aging population as demands on these systems continue to grow,” OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said. “The challenges are global, with jurisdictions all around the world facing similar challenges in the context of lower growth, high inflation and financial market uncertainty while responding to the implications of population ageing. We will need to continue to develop and strengthen a multi-pillar system that combines different types of pension schemes which supplement one another and diversify risks.”

To help countries improve the robustness of retirement systems and build peoples’ trust that their best interests are considered, the report includes a series of recommendations on how to introduce, develop and strengthen asset-backed pension arrangements. These schemes should complement, and never substitute, pay-as-you-go public pensions, and be designed to diversify the sources to finance retirement and make pension systems more resilient to the challenges they face, such as ageing populations.

These guidelines, building on the February 2022 OECD Recommendation of the Council for the Good Design of Defined Contribution Pension Plans, recognise the importance of occupational and personal pension arrangements that are increasingly an integral part of most countries’ overall pension system, and in some countries, the main component.

Employers can play an important role in the provision of asset-backed pension arrangements, according to the report. Reinforcing their role requires balancing the advantages, such as designing plans that fit the needs of employees, with the potential challenges, such as cost, complexity and administrative burden.

Improving their design also requires promoting low-cost and cost-efficient arrangements that will be reflected in the fees charged. However, policy makers and regulators need to consider the impact that different fee structures may have on individuals saving for retirement and on providers.

This edition of the Outlook also highlights the need for regulators and supervisors to ensure the appropriateness of mortality assumptions, as these are crucial to ensure the sustainability of lifetime retirement income for pensioners. It also provides policy guidelines on how to design, introduce, and implement non-guaranteed lifetime retirement income arrangements, which protect members from the longevity risk of outliving their savings without obliging further contributions from the sponsor to maintain benefit levels.

Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to preserve individual liberty and improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

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The Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development has assured Parliament of Government plans to rationalise tax incentives to realize its efficient and effective implementation. 

This was revealed by officials from the Finance Ministry led by the State Minister for Planning, Amos Lugoloobi, who were appearing before the Committee on Finance over Uganda Tax Expenditures Report for FY 2020/2021 to 2021/2022 on Thursday, 1st December 2022. 

Over time, Parliament has been concerned about the rising tax expenditures and called for a legal tax review and comprehensive evaluation of the benefits of tax exemptions given to investors for the last 10 years. 

The Permanent Secretary/ Secretary to the Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi, told the committee that government is implementing a Tax Expenditures Rationalisation Plan over the medium term to streamline tax incentives. 

“We are aware of the weaknesses we have been having in the way we have been managing these tax expenditures and we have put in place a tax expenditure rationalization plan with the help of our development partners, specifically the International Monetary Fund,” Ggoobi said. 

According to Ggoobi, the rationalisation plan will entail criteria of choosing beneficiaries, timeframe, and the purpose of the tax incentive and also sunset clauses which will inform the investors who intend to benefit of their obligations which must be met on time.

“This rationalisation plan will also help in cost-benefit analysis. We shall be able to tell the number and nature of jobs provided through the tax incentives and also contribute to our import substitution strategy,” he said.

However, Ggoobi noted that this tax expenditure rationalization plan is not to stop tax incentives, but to ensure that they are actually effective and beneficial to the economy. 

In FY 2023/2024, Government proposes to review tax expenditures on capital incomes, unify tax rate on capital income, and review exemptions on supplies of some machinery, tools, and input suitable for use in agriculture. 

For the last three financial years, Government has forgone revenue amounting to Shs11.7 trillion on tax incentives. According to the Finance Committee, this is extremely high and could be disastrous to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

“We need the Ministry of Finance to lay evidence that we are having benefits as a result of these tax expenditures. We need to reduce tax expenditures like Kenya has done so in the past five years,” Committee Chairperson, Keefa Kiwanuka, said.  
 
Minister Lugoloobi said since Government introduced tax incentives in the 1990s, key objectives of the Domestic Revenue Mobilisation Strategy have been met such as reduced importation of products, employment, and an increase in locally manufactured products among others. 

Pakwach district MP Jane Avur Pacuto said whereas the rationalization plan is a move in the right direction, the Ministry of Finance needs to tighten the grip on investors who receive incentives but do not show tangible results over time. 

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South African president Cyril Ramaphosa is facing a possible impeachment threat over the “Farmgate” scandal.

The president has been accused of covering up a $4m (£3.3m) theft from his farm in 2020, including kidnapping and bribing the burglars into silence.

A leaked report from an independent panel has found that Mr Ramaphosa abused his position and may have broken an anti-corruption law.

He has denied wrongdoing, and said the money was from selling buffalo.

The panel’s findings have been handed to parliament, which is set to examine them and decide whether or not to launch impeachment proceedings next week.

Mr Ramaphosa is less than a month away from a conference which will decide if he can run for a second term with his party, the African National Congress (ANC), in 2024. The incident could be particularly damaging as Mr Ramaphosa ran for office on an anti-corruption ticket.

The ANC will hold a meeting with its executive on Thursday, where it is expected that the issue will be discussed.

The Farmgate scandal erupted in June, when a former South African spy boss, Arthur Fraser, filed a complaint with police accusing the president of hiding a theft of $4m from his Phala Phala farm in the north-east of the country in 2020.

Mr Fraser, who is a close ally of former President Jacob Zuma, alleged that the money could have been the proceeds of money-laundering and corruption, and accused the president of kidnapping and bribing the burglars.

Holding such a large amount of money in dollars could violate foreign exchange control laws.

Mr Ramaphosa has confirmed a robbery, but said the amount stolen was less than that alleged, and denied attempting to cover it up.

Some $580,000 which had been paid in cash for buffalo was stolen from under sofa cushions in the farmhouse, he said.

“I did not ‘hunt’ for the perpetrators of the theft, as alleged, nor did I give any instructions for this to take place,” he wrote in a submission to the panel’s report, according to AFP news agency.

The panel concluded that there were many unanswered questions, calling it a “very serious matter”.

Little information was kept about the man who supposedly paid the money for buffalo, it said, adding that he had still not collected the animals two and a half years later.

The panel also said it was strange that the money had been kept hidden in a sofa, rather than in a safe until it could be lodged in a bank account.

“We think that the president has a case to answer on the origin of the foreign currency that was stolen, as well as the underlying transaction for it,” the report said. It added: “The president abused his position as head of state to have the matter investigated and seeking the assistance of the Namibian president to apprehend a suspect.”

Namibian president Hage Geingob has previously denied any involvement in the incident.

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