KABWE URGES BUSINESSES TO PARTNER WITH ICT EXPERTS

 

By Lumbiwe Mwanza

INFORMATION and Communication Technology (ICT) has become the backbone of many businesses nowadays and it is critical that sector players strengthen partnerships with ICT experts, Information Communications Technology Association of Zambia (ICTAZ) Committee Board Member Abel Kabwe has said.

Mr. Kabwe Said that ICT was important for businesses to survive, compete, and grow but that if not implemented well, could be disastrous to the business hence the need to have collaborations with ICT experts for business growth purposes.

He said that for any business to be effective, there was a need for driving forces that made it easy to conduct and that those forces included the application of ICTs to conduct business among SMEs and their trade.

“ICT has an impact on every part of the business from production, supply chains, marketing and sales, and business communication. There are many advantages of ICT like cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and security. But if not implemented properly, ICT can be disastrous to businesses because of disadvantages such the high initial cost of implementation, unemployment, lack of human touch, and cyber-attacks.

“It is important that the business community engages qualified ICT experts to prevent cyber-attacks on a business. As many countries including Zambia are promoting digitized financial platforms, it is critical that businesses embracing the digitization of systems work hand in hand with ICT experts, ” he added.

He said that the Government should continue to put in place deliberate policies which supported the investment in ICTs as it had an important role to play in the growth of the economy.

He said that it was commendable that through the 8th National Development Plan (8NDP), the Government recognized the legal and institutional reforms to facilitate universal access to ICT and promote the use of ICT in business (e-Commerce); networking of services and applications across the public sector and online access to the Government services.

He said that through appropriate use of ICT, Small businesses could compare with major market players and compete for the same customers.

He said that (ICT) and e-business applications provided many benefits across a wide range of intra- and inter-firm business processes and transactions and that partnerships with well-established ICT experts remained crucial.

TAZARA STRUGGLING TO MEET PASSENGER NEEDS

 

By Lumbiwe Mwanza

THERE has been low utilization of railway services in areas where the railway is parallel to the road but heavy utilization in areas where there is no road network, Tanzania -Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) managing director Bruno Ching’andu has said.

The TAZARA railway line runs between Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.

Currently, for many cross-border traders in Zambia that conduct their businesses between Zambia and Tanzania, the use of the TAZARA trains is the most affordable means of transporting both goods and people.

Mr. Ching’andu said the passenger coaches operating consist of Express train while the other one is not adding that on Tuesday and Sundays, the express train only stopped at major stations while the other one stops on all the 94 stations.

He said that the fleet of passenger coaches, which had been subjected to extreme strains from over-use and limited maintenance, had proved to be a challenge in meeting passenger needs.

“We are not able to meet all passenger needs due to the limited and ageing coaches. We have some coaches that are as old as 35 years old and have become a bit obsolete and maintaining them is now difficult as sourcing for spare parts is a problem,” Mr. Ching’andu said.

He said that the future for TAZARA lay in the recapitalisation efforts considering that the available equipment and infrastructure had drastically depreciated, needing urgent refurbishment and total replacement, in some cases.

He said the company had reached a stage where a fresh injection of capital was necessary for the refurbishment or replacement of aged equipment, infrastructure, and coaches.

LET’S IMPROVE PEDIATRIC HIV TESTING

By Lumbiwe Mwanza

As Zambia strives to end HIV epidemic control for adults, the need to increase pediatric testing should be scaled up, the Treatment, Advocacy and Literacy Campaign (TALC) has said.

Zambia will on August 15 commemorate the National HIV Testing Counselling and Treatment Day as part of interventions aimed at creating a more inclusive environment for persons living with the virus.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.7 million children worldwide were living with HIV in 2020, yet only half (54 percent) were receiving Antiretroviral Treatment (ART), compared to 74 percent of adults with HIV, despite notable expansion of pediatric ART.

TALC National Director Felix Mwanza said ahead of this day, it was important that stakeholders and the Government strengthened collaborations in having more children tested and put on treatment.

Mr. Mwanza said that implementing effective and efficient case-finding strategies was crucial to increasing pediatric antiretroviral therapy coverage.

“Despite the advances of the past two decades in the understanding of the characteristics of HIV, the means to prevent its transmission and the pathophysiology of the progression from HIV infection to symptomatic AIDS, as well as the development of effective antiretroviral therapy, HIV infection among children remains a significant problem that needs more strategies to address especially in rural areas where ignorance is still very high.

“Point-of-care for early infant diagnosis of HIV improves treatment initiation. Despite significant scale-up of programs to prevent Mother-to-Child Transmission (MTCT) of HIV, children are getting infected with HIV every day. If left unchecked with adequate policies and strategies, infected children will continue suffering,” Mr. Mwanza explained.

He said the Government needed to continue looking at ways of adapting strategies for effective and efficient pediatric HIV testing and treatment adding that ensuring that effective screening tools were developed using logistic regression methods could significantly improve HIV testing efficiency among children was important.

He noted that despite strategies for early infant diagnosis being in place, lack of timely maternal testing during pregnancy and low testing coverage in rural areas continued to undermine efforts of eradicating the pandemic by 2030.

INSTITUTIONAL CONFUSION WORRIES CSO-UN

 By Lumbiwe Mwanza

THE Government should find a clear strategy and mechanism aimed at indicating which institution or ministry has the mandate to champion issues of nutrition in the Country and change the nutrition systems, says Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition Alliance (CSO-SUN) country coordinator Daniel Kalale.

Mr. Kalale said that the existing confusion on which institution in the country has the mandate to promote nutrition has a negative impact on nutrition advocacy hence the need to put the issue to rest.

He said that the ministries of Health and Agriculture and the National Food and Nutrition Commission should have a more improved coordination other than the current confusion of which institution has the mandate to promote nutrition in the country.

“The confusion of which institution has the mandate to promote nutrition still exists and for as long as no clear strategy is found, the promotion of nutrition will not be clearly championed. If it is the three institutions mandated to promote nutrition values, let it be publicly known,” Mr. Kalale said.

He however commended the Government for the strides being made to promote a diversified production system that ensures that citizens have nutritious and safe foods.

He said that the political will can be seen from the Government to transform food systems in the country adding that the Government should not relent in expanding and improving current food assistance policies and programs to achieve nutrition security.

He said that achieving equity in nutrition security will require coordinated and sustained efforts from all stakeholders and that future advocacy, innovation, and research will 

‘SMOKING THRILLS, TOBACCO KILLS’

By Lumbiwe Mwanza

TOBACCO has remained a global agent of death as its use causes over 40 diseases many of which are fatal, Ministry of Health Acting Chief Non- Communicable Disease Officer Enerst Kakoma has warned.

According to the world health organization by 2030, globally, 75 percent of deaths will be as a result of tobacco use with the low and middle income countries accounting for a lion’s share.

Mr. Kakoma said that citizens needed to be more aware of the dangers of Tobacco use with the view to help the country save on health costs.

Mr. Kakoma insisted that the more than 7,000 chemicals being inhaled in cigarette smoke exposed the cigarette smoker to numerous toxins, which included the various tobacco constituents and the products of pyrolysis.

“Exposure to this complex chemical mixture causes immediate adverse physiologic effects shortly after the exposure occurs. The ultimate harm caused by repeated inhalation of the complex mixture of cigarette smoke toxicants at high daily doses, often sustained over the course of many years, causes a broad spectrum of short-term and long-term health effects that affect most major organ systems, ” Mr. Kakoma explained.

He said combustible tobacco products other than cigarettes are also associated with the same sort of chronic disease outcomes associated with cigarette smoking, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.

He insisted that all forms of tobacco use are harmful and that there was no safe level of exposure to tobacco as cigarette smoking was the most common form of tobacco use worldwide.

Meanwhile, centre for primary health care project manager Charity Syatalimi has urged stakeholders in the country not to give up on tobacco use control Laws.

Ms. Syatalimi said that the enactment of the Tobacco Bill will help the country save up on health costs and improve the health status of the people.

IMPLEMENT POLICIES TO PROMOTE KEY ECONOMIC SECTORS, GOVT URGED

 By Lumbiwe Mwanza

THE Government should implement and strengthen policies aimed at promoting production in key economic sectors such as mining, agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing to grow the economy, the Centre for Trade Policy and Development (CTPD) has said.

Recently, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that global growth is projected to fall from 3.5 per cent in 2022 to 3.0 per cent in both 2023 and 2024.

While the forecast for 2023 is modestly higher than predicted in the April 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO), it remains weak by historical standards.

CTPD Researcher Emmanuel Muma said that with the global growth projected to fall, it was important that developing countries put up modalities to increase production and services in key economic sectors.

Mr. Mumba observed that the Government’s ambition to increase production in the mining sector should be backed by adequate policies that will enhance production to increase exports.

He said to increase export of products, it was critical that there was also adequate support for local manufacturers and SMEs through incentives.

“In Zambia, you will understand that to date, the country is still struggling with economic growth mainly due to the existing debt. However, there is a need for the Government to implement and strengthen policies aimed at increasing growth through increasing production in key economic sectors,” Mr. Muma said.

He said that as the Government strived to make Zambia a middle income country by 2030, ensuring increased productivity in the key economic sectors would help increase the Gross Domestic Growth (GDP)

He further pointed out that the manufacturing sector was a pivot of economic development through its backward and forward linkages to economic growth, exports, and employment creation.

He said that there was still untapped potential in the manufacturing sector hence implementing more policies that increased production remained crucial adding that the sector had continued to provide a market for primary products and set the basis for exports with employment generation capacity.

He emphasized that Zambia’s vision for the manufacturing sector should be technology-based and export-focused and that it must be dynamic and competitive with effective entities that add value to the locally-abundant natural resources.

“Zambia’s goal should be to develop a diversified and competitive export- led value-adding manufacturing sector which will contribute more to GDP, ” he added. 

BROTHELS CHOKE ZAMBIA

By Lumbiwe Mwanza

IT IS disappointing that law enforcement agencies have continued to focus on politically-inclined cases which are highlighted in the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) report without much focus on human interest cases such as human trafficking and the increase in the number of spas operating as brothels, Green Party leader Peter Sinkamba has charged.

According to 2021-2022 FIC report, there has been an increase in the number of spas operated by foreign nationals set up within residential areas. Intelligence gathered revealed that some of these spas operate as brothels.

The FIC report also highlighted that human trafficking offences perpetrated by foreigners and Zambian nationals have been on the increase. During the period under review, the FIC noted a number of incidents of human trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation and other crimes involving Asian and East African nationals.

Human trafficking incidents are said to be prevalent along the line of rail involving mostly, East African nationals who are usually on transit to South Africa while the Asian nationals were used as sex workers in casinos around the country.

Mr. Sinkamba said that law enforcement agencies should not just focus on making politically-inclined arrests as certain trends of criminality will continue growing and having negative impact in the country.

He said that selective type of justice or arrests based on politically- inclined cases should not be the basis for their action and that there was a need for the law enforcement agencies to change this narrative.

“The law enforcement agencies in the country should be seen to take action against all reports coming from the FIC or any watchdog institution. They should not be seen only to pursue more of politically-inclined cases as this leads to compromised justice and have certain criminality trend growing.

“We little or nothing been done on issues of human interest cases such as human trafficking and emerging brothels in residential areas. Zambia should be concerned on such reports that there is an increasing mushrooming of spas operating as brothels being operated by foreign nationals and also issues of human trafficking call for measures to address challenges arising from having porous border systems,” Mr. Sinkamba said.

He said that issues of emerging brothels and human trafficking had the potential to corrupt morals among the young people if left unchecked.