Category: Opinion

Samsung Electronics, South Korea’s consumer electronics manufacturer has opened shop in Rwanda to ease access to its genuine products in the country.

The shop, which is opposite Union Trade Centre (UTC); a commercial
complex in the heart of the capital Kigali will ease access to the
firm’s genuine products, an official has said.

Samsung Electronics Africa Chief Operating Officer (COO) Mr. George
Ferreira said in an interview in Kenya’s capital Nairobi recently that
the shop would improve distribution of Samsung products in Rwanda.

By opening in Kigali, Samsung hopes to see more of its original
products capture the market thus kicking out fake products branded
Samsung.

This is expected to increase customer satisfaction, an ingredient that
Samsung uses to retain its customers.

The shop showcases a range of Samsung products including the most
popular ones—refrigerators, mobile handsets, computers, and television
screens.

The opening of Samsung in Kigali follows entry of rivals LG
Electronics, Hewlett Packard (HP) and Nokia. LG is also a South Korean based
firm.

The LG shop is situated on airport Avenue in Giporoso, Remera in Kigali
City but the firm’s products can mostly be found in most Indian-owned
electronics shops in the country.

Like Samsung, LG is also selling electronics products including mobile
phones, home appliances like refrigerators, television screens and
computers.

HP and Nokia use local distributors to supply their products.

The two Asian firms—LG and Samsung are strong competitors back in
Korea but Samsung is three times bigger than LG, according to Mr.
Ferreira.

LG has been operating in Africa for more than a decade while Samsung
has only been in the continent at least one year.

Although the two firms are aggressively penetrating the Rwandan mobile market, they are facing tough competition from Finnish firm Nokia.

Nokia has a bigger market share in Rwanda especially in the mobile phone segment.

In the computer and its accessories market, HP dominates the Rwandan market. On TV sets and other home appliances, Samsung and LG are targeting new markets in Africa, but Samsung says it wants to grow Africa market and beat all the other Consumer Electronics makers by 2015.

The firm says it will invest around USD140 million in five years and
increase sales revenue from USD1.2 billion last year to $10
billion by 2015 in Africa only.

Samsung is currently operating in more than 30 African countries
including Rwanda’s neighbors Burundi, Uganda, and
Tanzania. It has East Africa regional offices in Kenya, Nairobi.

Last month, the firm held a forum for its Africa partners in an event
that took place in Nairobi. At the same time, Samsung displayed its latest products ranging from Google’s Android (operating system) powered mobile phones and touch screen computers.

Gasabo district authorities have given troubled real estate firm DN international has a Friday ultimatum to remunerate all its workers or be shut down.

The company has about 30 to 40 employees contracted to work on its Green Park Villas project in Rusororo, Gasabo District, Kigali.
The project, which closed for over nine months since last year resumed operations recently.

The district mayor Gasabo , Willy Ndizeye, told this reporter that the agreement was reached when the firm’s employees stormed his office this Monday lamenting about nonpayment of their dues.

“I am following up the matter and in case it persists, we might even stop the construction on their site; the only option is to close them (down) until they pay all the workers,” he said.

“The challenge we have been having are the sub-contractors who did not pay their workers; so we are now not making payments to sub-contractors without the workers; any payment is going to be paid in their presence,” the Chief Executive Officer of DN international Nathan Lloyd said.

Lloyd insists that 90 percent of the workers have been cleared and the remaining ones are to be settled soon. But this to the workers is another gambit by the company.

“We have been patient since last year, we have families and children. They need to eat and go to school and we don’t have money,” complained one of the at the construction site in Rusororo.

The Executive Secretary of Rusororo sector, Jack Uwimana, said that when Lloyd was contacted yesterday, he told them that there were delays by KCB, the company’s banker who promised to clear the remaining lot of workers this Friday.

The Managing Director KCB Rwanda, Maurice K Toroitich said he was oblivious of delays by the bank to extend cash to the company but declined to reveal further information to the media.

“I am not allowed by regulations to discuss issues of my customers,” he said, adding that the bank directly deals with the customer issue on any issue.

The mayor noted that he is yet to establish whether all the complainants are genuine workers or have been influenced by one Mugabo, a sub-contractor, who was sued by DN International for executing substandard work.

Mugabo claims that he properly executed his duties as agreed but the company is yet to settle his payment to enable him to remunerate his workers.

“We are yet to find out the truth whether this sub-contractor is speaking the truth and is not using ghost workers to riot, but we have asked the company to pay workers and take the sub-contractor to court,” the mayor added.

Lloyd said that the company has lost almost Rwf15m in renumerating all the workers whose wages were defrauded by the sub-contractors, adding that: “The Rwf15m (paid) was out of sheer remorse of the workers and we want to maintain our reputation.”

Today the market registered slightly more volume and turnover compared to yesterday’s session. A total turnover of Rwf 17,434,000 was recorded from 75,800 BRALIRWA shares traded at 230 in 6 transactions as yesterday.

The market had recorded a total turnover of 16,307,000 Rfw from the sale of 70, 900 shares of Bralirwa traded in 3 transactions. The Breweries’s shares closed at Rwf 230.

At the close of business, there were two outstanding offers of 201,000 and 800 Bralirwa shares at Rwf 230.

The KCB and NMG counters did not record any activity today and their share prices remained unchanged from the previous day’s closing prices of Rwf 175 and Rwf 1200 respectively.

Bralirwa shares go ex – dividend on June 13, 2011 and NMG shares will trade cum dividend until today 31st May 2011.

The Rwanda Bureau of standards (RBS) has equipped its laboratories with new equipments meant to enhance consumer protection as well as facilitate traders to sell high quality products.

Antoine Mukunzi, the director of Bio chemical Labs encouraged traders to sell genuine products. “Manufacturers can now bring their products for verification if they want to gain their credibility and make better sales.” He further pointed,” among ways of improving sales ones commodity ought to abide with international standards and our role is to recommend quality products.”

Demonstrating how the machines work, Mark Cyubahiro Bagabe the RBS director general noted that the equipments will also be used to test goods entering the country.

In this respect, the petroleum unit for instance has been equipped with a petrol distillation machine which verifies the quality of petroleum products. The machine will restrict the sale of replica oil which is commonly a mix of petrol and paraffin; greedy traders use this scam to increase capacity levels.

In regard to food stuff, the sophisticated equipments are used to test the quantity of atomic elements such as mercury and lead especially in soft drinks.

Rwanda will implement a new set of business reforms aimed at boosting the contribution of small enterprises to the economy.

The country also wants to make Kigali one of the world’s top investment destinations, and hopes to achieve a higher ranking this year.
In the latest Doing Business Report 2011, Rwanda moved up 12 positions to position 58 of the top reformers globally.

The report benchmarks regulations that enhance business activities and those that hamper business. It focuses on business regulation and protection of property rights.

While SMEs constitute over 90 per cent of the businesses in Rwanda, with a potential of reducing poverty and delivering millions of dollars in revenue, their potential is crippled by the fact that they mainly operate in the informal sector.

In addition, SMEs still have limited access to finance due to high risk perception by lenders.

As a result, the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), the government agency spearheading the reforms, has said it will focus on implementing reforms that make it easy for SMEs to formalise their operations this year.

“We want to improve the way SMEs and other micro businesses do business — bring them into a formal set up,” said Claire Akamanzi, the chief of operations at RDB.

Ms Akamanzi said that with the first private credit reference now operational in the country, the process of getting credit will become easier.

New reforms to facilitate the businesses will include reducing further the process of starting a business, including implementing free online business registration.

It also includes reducing registration fees from Rwf25000 ($41) to Rwf15000 ($25).

“We want to encourage more businesses to register online and be able to register a business from anywhere without paying a fee,” she said.
Ms Akamanzi also said RDB has invested in training SMEs throughout the 30 districts in business and management skills.

“Even if we have some big businesses that contribute a lot to the economy, if we want to grow, then SMEs have to grow. When they grow, they can contribute more to the economy.”

Last year, the government said SMEs with a turnover of Rwf200 million (about $423,800) or below should declare taxes every quarter, instead of monthly, to create more time for SMEs to concentrate on their business.

Strong growth in the SME sector is needed to support not only Rwanda’s economic ambition of becoming a middle income country by 2020 but also to meet its development targets, including poverty reduction.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Rwanda needs an average growth of 8 per cent to meet its development goals, mainly driven by additional private investment.

Internet users in Burundi are expected to pay less if the country’s first fibre optic network fetches high-speed and low-cost internet through Rwanda and Tanzania early next year, an official has said.

Burundi, with the help of the World Bank (WB), is embarking on about 1,300-kilometres of fibre optic to cover all the 17 provinces, the capital Bujumbura and key borders with Tanzania and Rwanda.

Salvator Niyibizi, the Executive Secretary of the Executive Secretariat for Information and Communication Technologies (SETIC) in the Burundian Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications says completion of the first phase of the cable is expected in the first quarter of 2012.

This will see the so-called national backbone linked with similar infrastructure in Rwanda and Tanzania at the main border posts. Another phase will cover the provinces.

Rwanda has completed laying its national backbone covering 2,300 kilometres in the capital Kigali and main border posts while Tanzania continues to work on its national backbone infrastructure of more than 10,000 kilometres.

The Burundi backbone cable will be linked to that of Rwanda on two main entry points between the two countries.

One link will be in Bugesera, East of Rwanda while another one will be in South East of Rwanda at Akanyaru border post. On the Tanzanian side, the link will be at Kobero, South of Burundi.

Tanzania has direct access to the submarine cables with international bandwidth while Rwanda gets connection through Uganda all the way from Mombasa, Kenya where one submarine cable has a landing point.

Burundi hopes to fetch connection from both sides but the most urgent and reliable one is that from Rwanda, according to sources.
Currently some traffic from Burundi goes via Rwanda through microwave while the rest is sent via satellite.

Once Burundi backbone is connected, it is expected to lower the cost of internet in the East African country, which depends heavily on expensive and slow age-old satellite connectivity.

Like in other East African countries, telecom operators in Burundi pay US$2,500-3,000 per Mbps (megabyte per second) per months for international bandwidth and this is expected to fall significantly with the fibre optic connectivity.

“We expect the cost of Internet to go down. Maybe it will not go down in the beginning but we expect it to go down up to 70% and above in the long-run,” Mr. Niyibizi said in an interview in Kigali last Tuesday.

Mr. Niyibizi was speaking to the East African Business Week during the 18th Congress of the East African Communications Organisation (EACO) that concluded Friday last week in Kigali, Rwanda.

This is expected to ease doing business in Burundi as many companies, government and individuals continue to depend on the Iinternet a necessary communication and business tool.

EACO is an initiative of Communications Regulators, Broadcasters and National Posts Corporations in Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Since end-2008, Burundi has embarked on the national backbone project with the support of US$10.5 million from the World Bank (WB).
Niyibizi said that the backbone project is a public-private partnership. It brings together the government and five telecom operators.

The consortium created a company known as Burundi Backbone Systems (BBS) to coordinate and follow up the implementation of the backbone project.

The consortium used the WB money as an incentive.
ZTE, a Chinese company has been given the tender to lay the backbone cable.

The cable will be pure commercial and the shareholding operators will sell the Internet capacity to the final user. The government is also planning to do another fibre project for e-governance.

Burundi joins Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya in the quest to make a major shift from costly and slow satellite connectivity to cheap and faster fibre optic connectivity. This story was first published at the East African Business Week.

Market Report Monday 30th May, 2011 The week opened with a slight
increase in trade volumes and transactions and the market recorded a
total turnover of 16’307’000 Rfw from the sale of 709’000 shares of
Bralirwa traded in 6 transactions. BRALIRWA shares are trading cum
dividend up to June 13th 2011. Those who buy the shares up to June 13,
2011 will qualify for the final dividend announced by BRALIRWA. The
price of Bralirwa shares closed at 230 Rfw depicting a no change in
price of the Friday’s closing. At the close of trading session, there
was an outstanding bid of 139’100 Bralirwa shares at 230 Rfw. There
were also offers of 1400 and 38100 Bralirwa shares at 234 and an offer
of 15000 shares at 232 Rfw. The KCB and NMG counters did not record
any activity. The KCB and NMG share prices remained unchanged from the
Friday’s closing prices of Rwf 175 and Rwf 1200 respectively. NMG
shares will trade cum dividend until tomorrow Tuesday 2011.

Rwandan’s leading commercial bank, Bank of Kigali BK has launched three new products as part of a campaign to alleviate poverty.

These include ; Women Entrepreneurship Facility (Intambwe y’abanyarwandakazi), Youth Entrepreneurship Savings Account (YESA SINGIRA) and also Senior Loans and Savings Account (Ntugasaze).

In his remarks, Lawson Naibo, the Bank’s Chief Operating Officer, pointed out that the intambwe y’abanyarwandakazi product which targets women entrepreneurs, would facilitate them to access credit and financial advice.

“This will be done particularly to transform the lives of the women who earn less but with sensitive ideas that can contribute to the society,” Naibo said at the launch.

In a written statement, the bank’s Managing Director James Gatera said the product is intended to facilitate women entrepreneurs in the low end market and also to aptly fit the government’s policy and plan to ensure gender mainstreaming and full participation of women in all activities related to socio-economic development of the nation.

The Minister of Youth Sports and Culture (MIJESPOC), Protais Mitali who was the Chief Guest during the launch highly welcomed the projects and particularly emphasised on the Youth Entrepreneurship Savings Account.

“Am very happy about the product because youth will have the opportunity to access the credit without collaterals,” Mitari told IGIHE.COM. He added that since the youth has no security to present to the banks to access credit, the product would help them.

The Minister challenged the youth to visit the bank to obtain more information on the product so that they can get involved and ultimately become job creators instead of job seekers.

He also added that his ministry would seek for other possible means to support the unveiled products.

The three products unveiled by BK are all guarantee free. The bank would help to connect clients with one of two organisations to provide guarantees and the client would easily access the credit.

The two organizations are the French Agency for Development (AFD) which has branch offices based in Kenya and the Rwanda Development Bank (BRD).

The credit ranges from RWF 100,000 to RWF 5m depending on the project presented to the bank by a client.

The credit will be paid back in a period of six months to two years and beyond depending on the income of the borrower at an interest rate of 1.4 percent per month.

Following commencement of insolvency proceedings, ailing telcom firm Rwandatel has laid off 43.2 percent of its workforce as part of a company-wide restructuring process, the goal of which is to keep operating costs low and to operate with an optimum number of employees.

Rwanda’s utilities regulatory agency RURA withdrew Rwandatel’s GSM Mobile license in April this year and within weeks, the Office of the Registrar General had instituted insolvency proceedings against the company.

The commercial court in Kigali then appointed an administrator to take charge of the company who within a period of two months will advise Court if the company could be turned around or face possible liquidation.

Operating both its GSM Mobile and Fixed licenses, Rwandatel had a total workforce of 317 employees. Out of these, only 180 have been retained to run its remaining voice, internet and data services all of which run on the fixed network platform.

Rwandatel’s court appointed administrator Richard Mugisha, said, “In these times when the company is trying to reorganise itself to run its fixed network operation, reducing employees is sad but it has to be done to keep the company afloat. Management must respond by reducing costs and realigning its workforce. As such, we have had to place 137 on technical redundancy as there isn’t sufficient business to justify such a huge workforce. As administration, we shall pay the laid off staff terminal benefits as stipulated in the law”.

 “I feel it is critical to make very difficult adjustments at this time, to address the company’s current reality and to prepare the company for potential success in the future”, Mugisha added.

 Despite these recent developments, the company continues to offer the ever vital voice, internet and data services to individuals and businesses alike.