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Showing posts from July, 2016

Jumia Named in the World's Top 50 Smartest Companies.

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  Jumia Group has been named as the only Africa-focused company to make the World's Top 50 Smartest Companies list (2016), published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The announcement comes shortly after Jumia Group (formerly known as Africa Internet Group) earned the impressive title of ‘Africa’s First Unicorn’. MIT mentioned, among other credits, the company’s flagship project ‘Jumia’ - Africa’s biggest online shopping mall - and it’s online booking portal ‘Jumia Travel’ as the continent's leaders in their respective sectors. “Jumia Group is proud to be on this list, as it is great testimony to our relentless efforts in tapping into, and bringing to full the potential in Africa’s digital market” said Sacha Poignonnec, co-founder of the company. “We are committed to filling the gaps in this massively growing economy through technology; we believe that for every challenge encountered therein lies an opportunity”. Ranked at number 47, Jumia j

Fighting The Never Ending Battle Of Deforestation

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  By Evelyn Masaba: Over the years, the thick vegetation that was covering the countryside of Uganda has gone down by almost 50%. Every year, the country loses a huge chunk of forests is lost to encroachers which has created an imbalance in the weather seasons that Uganda experiences throughout the year. There are of course several reasons that have led to the encroachment: Land grabbing, population increase that have started destroying one of the most diverse ecosystem on the continent. Between the early 90s and 2000s, Uganda has lost over 5 million hectares of forest cover throughout the country which number increases by the year. Most of the forest reserves are handed over on a silver plate to future investors that have squandered away the forests and destroyed the rest around the factories with the residue from their activities. Do we understand why forests are important to our environment though? Reduction of Carbon Footprint. In any healthy environment,

How Social Media is transforming Uganda's Political and Social Landscape

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By Mwebya Fred The Uganda Social Media conference which took place at Kampala Serena Hotel on 19 July 2016 has created new hope for Democracy and Development in Uganda. The conference aimed at bringing together key stake holders from academia, government, civil society and media to have a constructive exchange on the opportunities and challenges of the growing social media sphere in Uganda. They also wanted to assess how Social Media is shaping the political and social landscape.  Around 250 participants participated at the conference which was organized by KAS. A keynote address by Daniel Kalinaki who is a senior media and communications expert/ practitioner contextualized the topic which stimulated the debate and set pace for the discussions. The conversation at the conference also hit the waves by being the number one trending topic on Twitter with the hash tag #UgandaSocialMedia . A high level panel which comprised of top social media influencers, activists and media practi