Uganda is currently participating in the 11th edition of Magical Kenya Tourism Expo that started on 5th up to 7th October 2022 at the Bomas in Nairobi.

The Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) team at the expo is comprised of Director Ronald Kaggwa and Deputy CEO Bradford Ochieng together with staff in the marketing department. Uganda’s marketing contingent include Uganda Wildlife Authority, Uganda Wildlife Education Conservation Centre, Uganda Airlines, the private sector represented by tour operators, hoteliers among others.

This year’s expo has attracted over 200 exhibitors, 160 hosted buyers with travel trade and international media across over 30 countries from the globe.

Uganda’s participation in the Expo is key in positioning the country’s tourism products and services to the globe. Kenya as a country has previously contributed over 60% of inbound visitors making it a strategic source market for Uganda.

While at the Expo, Uganda Tourism Board will leverage on this opportunity to emphasize the new refreshed destination brand Explore Uganda – The Pearl of Africa that positions Uganda as a unique tourism destination.

To show case Uganda to the world, the board has so far hosted a media briefing and MKTE cocktail ‘night of magic’ which has already generated a lot of interest and traffic to destination Uganda exhibition stall. Other events planned include hosted buyer hangout, tourism board dinner, ATTA networking cocktail, closing cocktail and a speakers’ appreciation dinner.

UTB Director Ronald Kaggwa on the sidelines of the Expo revealed that tourism is listed among the foundational elements of the economy under Vision 2040. “In order to take advantage of the numerous opportunities available, it is imperative to aggressively market our destination, bring forward the brand image, reputation and Uganda’s unique identity,” he said.

Bradford Ochieng, UTB Deputy CEO noted that the board was working closely with Market Destination Representatives Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities and its agencies like Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), Uganda Wildlife Education Centre among others, private sector and development partners to market tourism destination Uganda.

“UTB is working to not only increase the number of tourists, but also add value on their spending. This will subsequently stimulate increased investments that create employment and inclusive development of the country,” he said.

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A former policeman killed 34 people on Thursday in a mass shooting at a children’s day-care center in Thailand, with media reporting the gunman later shot and killed himself.

The victims included 22 children as well as adults, police said in a statement.

Police colonel Jakkapat Vijitraithaya from Nong Bua Lam Phu province said the gunman went home and killed his wife and child after the mass shooting.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha on Thursday ordered an urgent probe after a former police officer murdered more than 30 people, most of them children, in a rampage at a nursery.

“Concerning this horrifying incident… I would like to express my deepest sorrow and condolences to the families of the dead and injured,” Prayut wrote on his official Facebook page, adding that he had told the national police chief to “fast-track an investigation.”

Earlier, police said a manhunt was under way for the shooter, and a government spokesman said the prime minister had alerted all agencies to apprehend the culprit.

Mass shootings are rare in Thailand even though the rate of gun ownership is high compared with some other countries in the region, and illegal weapons are common.

In 2020, a soldier angry over a property deal gone sour killed at least 29 people and wounded 57 in a rampage that spanned four locations.

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The President of the International Theological Institute, Prof. Christiaan Alting von Geusau is in Uganda for the 24th National Prayer Breakfast, going to be held at State House Entebbe on October 8.

Prof. Geusau, who is also the president of the International Catholic Legislators Network, was received at Entebbe International Airport by Members of Parliament including Francis Aogon of Kumi municipality, Francis Mwijukye of Buhweju, Kahonda Donozio of Ruhinda County and Dr. Nicholas Kamara of Kabale Municipality.

The National Prayer Breakfast event organized annually by the Parliament of Uganda on the eve of independence, converges political leaders from across the political divide and denominations and for 2022 is under the theme: Arise and Build- picked from Nehemiah 2:18. The scripture talks about how God led the children of Israel in the task of rebuilding the broken walls of Jerusalem.

According to David Bahati, the Chairman of the Uganda Parliamentary National Prayer Breakfast Fellowship and State Minister of Industry, the theme is timely considering that Uganda, like the rest of the world, is embarking on the post-COVID-19 economic recovery.

“For the last two and half years, we have experienced the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that is now fading away. But God has sustained our health, our economy, and our communities,” said Bahati.

Adding: “We have what it takes to build our country and it is time to arise to accomplish the mission since Uganda is endowed with minerals, a good climate, and a young population full of energy.”

Parliament has an active prayer breakfast fellowship with the membership of about 200 Members of Parliament that weekly assemble on Thursdays for prayers and discussions on leadership.

President Yoweri Museveni and First Lady Janet Museveni have attended all the ceremonies since its inception. Museveni says he introduced it after a visit to the United States. Many countries including the US, Kenya, Israel, Nigeria, and others organize prayer breakfasts annually.

The event is also annually attended by the Vice President, Speaker of Parliament as the chief host, Chief Justice, Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Deputy Chief Justice, Prime Minister, and several other government leaders, political and business leaders.

Personalities who have attended the event in Uganda include former Burundi President, Pierre Nkurunziza, Kenyan President William Ruto, and senators from the US, Nigeria, and Kenya among others.

It is the fourth time the interfaith annual event organized by the Parliament of Uganda is being held at the State House since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic to control the number of physical participants. The larger population is expected to electronically follow the event on mainstream and social media.

Before COVID19, the event was annually held at Hotel Africana and used to attract participants from the United States, Nigeria, DRC, Kenya, Burundi, South Sudan, and other countries.

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As one of the strategies to further improve customer experience and deliver services to its customers conveniently, Equity bank has launched a high-tech contact centre. The new Contact Centre will allow the Bank to deliver improved support conveniently to the nearly 1.6 million customers 24/7.

Customers will be able to interact with highly trained customer relationship officers using state-of-the-art technology to document, categorise and resolve their issues. The contact center has a capacity to accommodate 70 customer relationship officers and shall handle all customer queries, and complaints in the 5 languages widely spoken across Uganda. The languages are English, Luganda, Runyakitara, Luo, and Swahili which were carefully selected to match the Bank’s branch footprint.

The implementation of the new Contact Centre follows Equity’s strategic objective to become a massive retail bank that is highly digitized. In recent years, the bank has grown its customer base from 800,000 in 2019 to nearly 1.6 million customers currently making it the fastest growing financial institution in the country. The new contact centre fits well into the bank’s digital agenda by providing the capabilities to serve customers conveniently online through voice and social media channels.

“We have grown in leaps and bounds and are now working to revolutionise our customer’s experience by creating a culture of obsession with customer service starting with onboarding through to when our customers interact with us. We are building a culture of superior service to address all customer experience pain points, ensure system accessibility, availability, and stability, through digitized operations,’ said the Managing Director Samuel Kirubi

‘We have built standardized processes and procedures to create synergies that have similar experience for customers and staff, as well as deliver a true Equity brand experience driven by the ONE EQUITY principle,’ Kirubi added

Customers who have previously been affected by the long queues in branches can now reach the bank through the contact centre virtually or via phone call instead of visiting branches.

“At Equity, it is important that exceptional service accompanies our product offering. We have therefore intentionally made significant investments in technology specially designed with the customer in mind. However, technology alone is not enough to meet the needs of our customers.  We have combined it with a team of highly trained professionals who have extensive knowledge and are committed to exceptional service aligned to best practices within the banking industry,” Mr. Kirubi added.

The contact centre shall complement other business transformation initiatives the bank is focusing on, to enhance its digital banking capabilities and product offering.

In addition to handling customer complaints and queries, the new Contact Centre shall also support Equiduuka agents and merchants.

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The world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 absent history-defying rates of economic growth over the remainder of this decade, according to a new World Bank study. The study finds that COVID-19 dealt the biggest setback to global poverty-reduction efforts since 1990 and the war in Ukraine threatens to make matters worse.

The Bank’s latest Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report provides the first comprehensive look at the global landscape of poverty in the aftermath of the extraordinary series of shocks to the global economy over the past few years. It estimates that the pandemic pushed about 70 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, the largest one-year increase since global poverty monitoring began in 1990. As a result, an estimated 719 million people subsisted on less than $2.15 a day by the end of 2020.

“Progress in reducing extreme poverty has essentially halted in tandem with subdued global economic growth,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass. “Of concern to our mission is the rise in extreme poverty and decline of shared prosperity brought by inflation, currency depreciations, and broader overlapping crises facing development. It means a grim outlook for billions of people globally. Adjustments of macroeconomic policies are needed to improve the allocation of global capital, foster currency stability, reduce inflation, and restart growth in median income. The alternative is the status quo—slowing global growth, higher interest rates, greater risk aversion, and fragility in many developing countries.”

The report indicates 2020 marked a historic turning point—when the era of global income convergence yielded to divergence. The poorest people bore the steepest costs of the pandemic: income losses averaged 4% for the poorest 40%, double the losses of the wealthiest 20% of the income distribution. Global inequality rose, as a result, for the first time in decades.

Strong fiscal policy measures made a notable difference in reducing COVID-19’s impact on poverty. In fact, the average poverty rate in developing economies would have been 2.4 percentage points higher without a fiscal response. Yet government spending proved far more beneficial to poverty reduction in the wealthiest countries, which generally managed to fully offset COVID-19’s impact on poverty through fiscal policy and other emergency support measures. Developing economies had fewer resources and therefore spent less and achieved less: upper-middle-income economies offset just 50% of the poverty impact, and low- and lower-middle income economies offset barely a quarter of the impact.

“Over the next decade, investing in better health and education will be crucial for developing economies, given the severe learning losses and health-related setbacks they suffered during the pandemic,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. “In a time of record debt and depleted fiscal resources, this will not be easy. Governments will need to concentrate their resources on building human capital and maximizing growth.”

The new report is the first to provide current and historical data on the new global extreme-poverty line, which has been adjusted upward to $2.15 a day to reflect the latest 2017 purchasing-power-parity data. Extreme poverty fell dramatically across the world from 1990 through 2019, the latest year for which official data are available. But progress slowed after 2014, and policymakers now confront a tougher environment: Extreme poverty is concentrated in parts of the world where it will be hardest to eradicate—in Sub-Saharan Africa, in conflict-affected areas, and in rural areas.

Sub-Saharan Africa now accounts for 60% of all people in extreme poverty—389 million, more than any other region. The region’s poverty rate is about 35%, the world’s highest. To achieve the 2030 poverty goal, each country in the region would need to achieve per-capita GDP growth of 9% per year for the remainder of this decade. That’s an exceptionally high hurdle for countries whose per-capita GDP growth averaged 1.2 percent in the decade before COVID-19.

National policy reforms can help restart progress in reducing poverty, the report finds. Stepped-up global cooperation will also be necessary. In fiscal policy, governments should act promptly on three fronts:

Avoid broad subsidies, increase targeted cash transfers: Half of all spending on energy subsidies in low- and middle- income economies goes to the richest 20 percent of the population who consume more energy. Cash transfers are a far more effective mechanism for supporting poor and vulnerable groups.

Focus on long-term growth: High-return investments in education, research and development, and infrastructure projects need to be made today. In a time of scarce resources, more efficient spending and improved preparation for the next crisis will be key.

Mobilize domestic revenues without hurting the poor. Property taxes and carbon taxes can help raise revenue without hurting the poorest. So can broadening the base of personal and corporate income taxes. If sales and excise taxes do need to be raised, governments should minimize economic distortions and negative distributional impacts by simultaneously using targeted cash transfers to offset their effects on the most vulnerable households.

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