The Editorial Team |

Islamic State Could Rise Again in Libya, Interior Minister Says

TRIPOLI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Libya needs more help from the United States to overcome its political divisions, the country’s interior minister said, warning that Islamic State was taking advantage of the chaos to regroup. While the Washington-backed fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has reduced the territory the self-styled “caliphate” holds, its militants are using the Libyan desert to regroup despite a 2016 U.S.-backed anti-terror campaign that pushed them from the…

South Africa Inflation Closer to U.S. Is Good News for Rand

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LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – The narrowing inflation differential between South Africa and the U.S. signals long-term support for the rand and local-currency bonds, according to Standard Bank Group Ltd. Consumer-price increases in Africa’s most-industrialized economy slowed to 4 percent in January, in the lower half of the central bank’s 3 percent to 6 percent target range. That curbed the inflation differential with the U.S. to below its ten-year average. “This partly reflects the SARB’s success…

Morgan Stanley Keeps Faith in Some of EM’s Worst Currency Losers

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s rand, Turkey’s lira and Brazil’s real may be among the worst-performing emerging-market currencies in the past month, but Morgan Stanley isn’t giving up hope. The lender’s VIRP model, which produces buy and sell signals based on volatility and idiosyncratic risk premia, remains long on those units, as well as Russia’s ruble, even as a rally in developing-nation assets loses steam amid rising geopolitical risks and lingering concerns over a…

Son of Former Liberian Leader Charged in Banknote Scandal

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MONROVIA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Three former senior officials of Liberia’s central bank, including a son of ex-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, were charged with seven counts of corruption following a probe into the disappearance of about $100 million in cash that was printed abroad. The government has been trying to determine what happened to containers of Liberian dollars that were brought into the small West African nation between 2016 and 2018 under the previous administration,…

London HIV Patient’s Remission Spurs Hope for Curing AIDS

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LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – A stem-cell treatment put a London cancer patient’s HIV into remission, marking the second such reported case and reinvigorating efforts to cure the AIDS-causing infection that afflicts some 37 million people globally. The patient has been in remission for 19 months, the International AIDS Society said in a statement. That’s too soon to label the treatment — which used hematopoietic stem cells from a donor with an HIV-resistance gene —…

Triumphant Buhari Can Forget Honeymoon as Nigeria Woes Mount

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Muhammadu Buhari will have little time to celebrate his resounding victory in Nigeria’s presidential election before facing the multitude of problems dogging Africa’s biggest oil producer. The legal challenge to last weekend’s vote promised by his main rival, Atiku Abubakar, is the least of his worries. Add to that a listless economy, Islamist State attacks wreaking havoc in the northeast and an explosive cocktail of worsening poverty and rapid population growth. The 76-year-old former general came to…

How the Cobalt Market Fell Victim to Allure of Electric Cars

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Cobalt prices were surging so much last year that thieves were carrying out elaborate heists at warehouses in Europe’s busiest port. Now, prices are in free fall and mining companies are taking the financial hit. The story of what happened is the classic boom-bust in commodities. In the case of cobalt, it was Elon Musk’s vision of electric cars gaining mass appeal and an ensuing rush of money to…

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