:Safaricom expands M-PESA Global to Ethiopia, enabling seamless cross-border mobile money transactions between Kenya and Ethiopia. This move promotes financial inclusion, fosters economic growth, and facilitates regional trade by offering convenient and efficient fund transfers. Safaricom aims to boost mobile money penetration in Ethiopia, empowering businesses and individuals while supporting Ethiopia’s development goals. With its strong digital expertise, Safaricom continues to drive innovation in East Africa’s financial landscape.

By Charles Wachira
Safaricom, Kenya’s leading telecommunications provider, has launched its M-PESA Global service in Ethiopia, marking a significant step towards enhancing cross-border financial transactions between the two East African nations.

 This move is expected to foster economic growth, facilitate trade, and improve financial inclusion across the region.

M-PESA Global allows customers to make mobile money transactions seamlessly from Kenya to Ethiopia, offering a convenient and efficient way to transfer funds across borders.

 This expansion is part of Safaricom’s broader strategy to increase mobile money use and penetration in Ethiopia, leveraging its expertise in digital financial services.

Esther Waititu, Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer, emphasized the strategic importance of this collaboration, stating, “This partnership underscores our commitment to delivering innovative financial solutions that meet the dynamic needs of our customers. By enhancing access to cross-border transfers, we are empowering individuals and businesses across the region.”

Benefits for Ethiopia:

The introduction of M-PESA Global in Ethiopia is expected to have several positive impacts:

1. Enhanced Financial Inclusion: It will enable more Ethiopians to access formal financial services, promoting financial inclusion and reducing reliance on cash transactions.
2. Economic Growth: Facilitating easier and more affordable cross-border transactions will stimulate economic activity, benefiting local businesses and contributing to overall economic growth.
3. Trade Facilitation: Simplifying cross-border payments will facilitate trade between Kenya and Ethiopia, supporting importers, exporters, and small businesses engaged in regional commerce.

Opportunities for Individuals and Businesses:

For individuals, the availability of M-PESA Global means easier remittances and financial support from family members abroad. Businesses can leverage the service for payments, improving efficiency and reducing transaction costs associated with cross-border trade.

Safaricom’s expansion into Ethiopia with M-PESA Global reflects a strategic alignment with Ethiopia’s economic development goals and underscores the company’s commitment to driving digital transformation across the region.

About Safaricom:

Safaricom PLC is Kenya’s leading telecommunications company and pioneer in mobile money services through its widely recognized M-PESA platform. With over 50 million customers and a robust network infrastructure, Safaricom continues to innovate and expand its services to meet the evolving needs of consumers and businesses in East Africa.

This expansion into Ethiopia represents a significant milestone in Safaricom’s regional strategy and reinforces its position as a key player in driving digital and financial inclusion initiatives across East Africa

Keywords:M-PESA Global Ethiopia:Safaricom expansion:Cross-border transactions:Financial inclusion:Mobile money East Africa

: Between 2001 and 2002, the Mau Forest deforestation resulted in loss of about  533 square kilometres of tree cover. Now, a group of women, under the aegis of the Paran Women Group, are preparing to plant 100,000 saplings this rainy season to restore the forest.  

By Joyce Chimbi

Between 2001 and 2022, the Mau Forest’s deforestation resulted in the loss of about 533 square kilometers of tree cover. Now, a group of women, under the aegis of the Paran Women Group, are preparing to plant 100,000 saplings this rainy season in an effort to restore the forest.

Paran Women Group’s executive director, Naiyan Kiplagat, is working in the forest. The group are passionate guardians of the environment and promoters of gender equality. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The Great Rift Valley is part of an intra-continental ridge system that runs through Kenya from north to south. A breathtaking, diverse mix of natural beauty that includes dramatic escarpments, highland mountains, cliffs and gorges, lakes and savannas. It is also home to one of Africa’s greatest wildlife reserves—the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

give life to this wondrous natural phenomenon. Located about 170 kilometres northwest of Nairobi, this is the largest indigenous montane forest in East Africa. It is also the largest of the country’s five watersheds and a catchment area for 12 rivers that flow into five major lakes.

More than 10 million people depend on its rivers. Its magnificent portfolio of rare plants and animal species is unfortunately a magnet for illegal activities. Forest monitoring groups say a staggering 25 percent of the forest was lost between 1984 and 2020 and that overall, Mau Forest lost 19 percent of its tree cover—around 533 square kilometres—between 2001 and 2022.

“Paran Women Group is committed to restoring the Mau Forest. To stop the pace and severity of its destruction and degradation, we approached the government through the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and were allowed access to 200 acres of the Maasai Mau Forest block, which is one of the 22 blocks that make the entire Mau Forest Complex. There are 280 water catchments inside the complex,” Naiyan Kiplagat, the executive director of the Paran Women Group told IPS.

“In January this year, we began our restoration efforts and have already covered 100 acres. At the moment, we have prepared 70,000 seedlings and intend to collect another 30,000 from women groups to reach our target of 100,000 tree seedlings, which will be planted once the rainy season begins to cover the remaining 100 acres.”

In Maa, a language spoken by the Maasai community, Paran means ‘come together to assist each other’. Paran Women Group is an organization comprised of women from the Maasai and Ogiek communities who are indigenous, minority ethnic groups.

Forest rangers working for the Kenya Forest Service are responsible for protecting Kenya’s forests. Paran Women Group are in a partnership with KFS to restore Maasai Mau Forest block. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

There are 280 water catchments inside the expansive Mau Forest Complex. These feed 12 rivers, which in turn feed five major lakes. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The organization comprises 64 women groups and 3,718 members. United against dual marginalization and patriarchy, the group started small, in 2005 and continues to grow and expand their base and conservation activities.

Carrying the wisdom of their ancestors, they rely on indigenous knowledge and innovation in their conservation, afforestation, reforestation and all other land restoration efforts while promoting gender equality. Paran Women Resource centre is located in Eor Ewuaso, a remote rural village in the Ololunga location of Narok South sub-county, Narok County, in the Rift Valley.

The women hold a title deed to the expansive piece of land. A notable achievement in a minority community where women have little autonomy and land is owned and controlled by men. They have another seven satellite resource centres within the expansive counties geared towards giving women access to productive resources.

These centres are a hub of knowledge and activities to promote conservation and livelihood activities such as sustainable agriculture, beekeeping, beadwork and briquettes for energy-saving cooking to release pressure from the embattled Mau Forest. More than 617 households are already using efficient, energy-saving stoves.

“We are conservationists with a passion for gender equality. Gender-based violence is prevalent in indigenous communities, such as the outlawed Female Genital Mutilation and forced marriages. The most recent incidence was of a nine-year-old girl. We are marginalized as a community in general and worse, our culture has few rights for women and girls. We help children stay in school by paying school fees from our income-generating activities,” she says.

Patrick Lemanyan, a resident of Ololunga, says Paran women “rear and sell chicken and foods such as pumpkin, vegetables and sorghum. They also sell beadwork. Maasai beadwork is unique, beautiful and very marketable. In Nairobi, there is even the popular Maasai market for such beadwork and other Maasai items, such as sandals. The women here face no resistance from the community. We have suffered for many years from failed rainfall and we know that saving the forest is also about saving us as a community.”

Paran Women Resource Centre is located in Eor Ewuaso, a remote rural village in the Ololunga location of Narok South sub-county, Narok County, in Rift Valley. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Some of the jewelry that the women at the Paran Women Group make. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Naiyan says indigenous communities depend on natural resources such as forests, rivers and their biodiversity for their survival. The ongoing climate and biodiversity crises affect them the most as a community. Women have no assets and are therefore worse off.

“The Maasai’s are pastoralists. During prolonged dry seasons, a man will take all the livestock with him and move from place to place for even three years, leaving behind his wives and children. The family is left behind with nothing because women own nothing,” she says.

Naiyan, an Ogiek married to a Maasai, says the Ogiek have not faired any better. As hunters and gathers in an ecosystem that has been destroyed by human activity and climate change, they too are in a life-and-death situation and, are learning to pursue livelihood options outside of their indigenous lifestyle by keeping poultry for sale and farming. Men do not keep or concern themselves with poultry as it is considered beneath them. They keep large livestock such as cows and goats.

Originally pastoralists and hunters and gatherers, the Maasai and Ogiek have turned to sustainable agriculture as a climate adaptation mechanism. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

These are manyattas, Maasai traditional homes. Women from the Maasai and Ogiek communities have joined forces to save their native lands. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

“The role of indigenous groups and more so women, in environmental protection cannot be overemphasized. More so as women are able to combine conservation efforts with income-generating activities. They educate and support each other, and their children grow to school, breaking the debilitating cycle of poverty associated with minority groups due to historical injustices and inequalities,” says Vesca Ikenya, an educator in Gender and Natural Resources.

Stressing that “indigenous people and local communities bring on board indigenous knowledge and leadership that only they possess as custodians of their own lands and waters and have had intimate interactions with their ecosystems since time immemorial. Each generation preserves and passes on this knowledge to the next. When indigenous and local communities take lead in conservation efforts, they never get it wrong. They understand which species grew where and when.”

The Paran Women Group tree nursery is home to 27 indigenous species, including croton macrostacyus, syzygium cuminii, prunus African and Olea Africans. Of the 150,000 tree seedlings already planted this year, 112,500 have survived and are thriving.

According to 2021 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs and International Labour Organization joint report, indigenous peoples were responsible for protecting an estimated 22 percent of the planet’s surface and 80 percent of biodiversity.

The Paran Women Group has not gone unnoticed and has won a series of international awards. In 2018, they received an award on rural survival from the World Women Foundation Summit; in 2020, they received the International Leadership Award from the International Indigenous Women’s Forum; last year, during the COP28 in the UAE, they received the Gender Justice Climate Solutions and are preparing to receive yet another international award in October 2024.

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

:Report exposes corporate capture draining $700B in public subsidies from Global South, hindering climate action while fossil fuels outpace renewable energy funding.

By Maina Waruru

A report examining corporate capture of public finance is accusing industries fueling the climate crisis, including fossil fuel ones, of draining public funds in the Global South, singling them out for squeezing out of governments USD 700 billion in public subsidies each year.

The report, How theFinance Flows: Corporate capture of public finance fuelling the climate crisis in the Global South, released on 17 September says that the climate-destructive sectors are benefiting from money that could go to paying for schooling for all Sub-Saharan African children 3.5 times over, even as Global South renewable energy projects remain starved of cash, receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossil fuels sector.

While urging governments in the developing world to allocate more of their limited resources in ways that “truly serve their people’s needs” through climate solutions for food and energy, the analysis of financial flows by ActionAid reveals that the fossil fuel sector in the region received a staggering annual average of USD 438.6 billion a year in subsidies, between 2016 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and 2023.

The industrial agriculture sector alone benefited from government subsidies equivalent to a whopping USD 238 billion a year on average between 2016 and 2021, even as it continued to contribute to the worsening of nature, it  reveals.

It further reveals that the industries causing the climate crisis are also draining the lion’s share of public funds, including in “climate-hit countries,” in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, even as initiatives providing climate solutions remain severely underfunded.

The report points to corporate capture of public finance, combined with a lack of international climate finance, as some of the factors holding back climate action in some of the “countries and communities that need it most”.

While also finding that climate finance grants from the Global North for climate-hit countries are still grossly insufficient to support climate action and the necessary transitions in the southern hemisphere, it gives examples of several countries in Africa where policies in place were in conflict with actual reality actions.

These include the fossil fuel-rich African countries of South Africa and Nigeria, which have been found to be heavily subsidizing the discredited sector.

The countries, including Bangladesh in South Asia, Action Aid says were providing fuel subsidies up to between 22 and 33 times the “per capita level of annual public investment in renewable energy” flow, for example.

As a result, in the hemisphere, renewable energy initiatives are receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossils sector, while climate finance grants amount to just a 20th of the Global South’s public finance going to fossils and industrial agriculture.

“While trillions of dollars in climate finance from the Global North to the Global South are necessary to adequately address the climate and development crises, Global South governments must allocate their limited resources in ways that truly serve their people’s needs through climate solutions for food and energy,” it says.

“Meanwhile, the failure of Global North countries to provide adequate climate finance for climate transitions means that Global South countries are locked into harmful development pathways that destroy ecosystems, grab lands and compound the injustice of climate change,” it adds.

Citing the example of Southern Africa’s Zambia, it says that the industrial agriculture sector in the country gobbled up 80 percent of the national agriculture budget in 2023, through subsidies for “climate-harming synthetic fertilizers and commercial seeds.”

“Meanwhile, only 6 percent of the Agriculture Ministry’s Agricultural Development and Productivity Programme was spent on supporting farmers to adopt agroecological, nature-friendly farming approaches, that naturally strengthen soil fertility and reduce dependency on agrochemical inputs,” it explains the contradiction.

Zambia’s neighbor Zimbabwe has made public policy statements in support of a shift towards agroecology, a shift evidenced by 34 percent of the country’s agriculture budget this year supporting farmers to adopt practices to move from climate-destructive agrochemicals.

Despite that, Zimbabwe is still using approximately 50 percent of its entire national agriculture budget towards subsidizing industrial agribusiness inputs such as fertilizers and hybrid seeds,” signaling the industry’s continued control over the sector and budget, as well as the potential to free up more public finances for public good’.

Two west African countries, the Gambia and Senegal, and South America’s Brazil were equally  found to be engaging in contradictory practices, making public investments in renewable energy, on a scale that is almost comparable to the per capita public subsidy provision for fossil fuels.

In the Gambia, the scale of public investment in renewable energy is more than four-fifths that of public finance provided to fossil fuels; while in Brazil and Senegal, the scale of renewables investment was found to be two-thirds that of fossil fuel subsidies.

“Kenya’s ambition to be a global leader in renewable energy is borne out by the finding that per capita investment in renewables in the country is outspending public subsidy provision to fossil fuels. However, recent protests in Kenya against the government’s reduction of fossil fuel subsidies underline the importance of feminist Just Transition principles,” the investigation found.

“Shifts in public financing must be carefully sequenced to protect the rights of people—especially women—living in poverty. Any reductions in fossil fuel subsidies should target the wealthy corporations first. Only once accessible and democratic alternatives and comprehensive social protections are available to people on low incomes, should progressive policies be shifted,” the analysis concluded.

The report further found that governments in the North continue to disproportionately fuel the climate crisis, and even though the developed world has just a quarter of the world’s population, their annual average fossil fuel subsidies amounted to USD 239.7 billion.

Action Aid laments that renewable energy public investment in the Global South comes to an annual average of USD 10.3 billion each year, noting that even worse, renewable energy investment in the South has been on a downward trend, more than halving from USD 15 billion in 2016 to USD 7 billion in 2021.

It calls on governments to speed up the transition to green, resilient, democratic and people-led climate solutions for food and energy, such as renewable energy and agroecology. “For Global South countries already experiencing the devastating consequences of climate change, the need for global transition is all the more urgent”.

According to Arthur Larok, Secretary General of ActionAid International, the report further helps expose wealthy corporations’ ‘parasitic’ behavior.

“They are draining the life out of the Global South by siphoning public funds and fueling the climate crisis. Sadly, the promises of climate finance by the Global North are as hollow as the empty rhetoric they have been uttering for decades. It is time for this circus to end; we need genuine commitments to ending the climate crisis,” he said.

The report also debunks the “false narrative” that fossil fuel and industrial agriculture expansion in the Global South is necessary to address food insecurity and energy poverty and to provide livelihoods and public revenue, said Teresa Anderson, Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid International and one of the report’s authors.

“It seems that money is the root of all climate upheaval. Climate-destructive industries are bleeding the Global South of the public funds they should be using to deal with the climate crisis. “The lack of public and climate finance for solutions means that in climate-vulnerable countries, renewable energy is receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossil fuel sector,” she added.

The time had come for the poor to stand up to industries that are draining their finances and wrecking the climate.

Public resources, the report recommends, should be directed toward supporting just transition away from climate-destructive fossil fuels and industrial agriculture and in favor of “people-led climate solutions that safeguard people’s rights to food, energy and livelihoods.”

It should also go to scaling up decentralized renewable energy systems to provide energy access, and gender-responsive agricultural extension services that offer training in agro-ecology and adaptation.

It appeals to wealthy countries to provide “trillions of dollars in grant-based climate finance each year to Global South countries on the front lines of the climate crisis,” including by agreeing to an ambitious new climate finance goal at COP29.

Further, it calls for regulation of the banking and finance sectors to end destructive financing, including setting minimum standards for human rights, social and environmental frameworks, and transformation of the international financial institutions that are pushing climate-vulnerable countries into “spiraling debt.”

Keywords:Corporate Capture:Fossil Fuel Subsidies:Climate Finance:Global South:Renewable Energy

IPS UN Bureau Report