Author: The Editorial Team

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – South African platinum producers, the world’s biggest miners of the metal, have asked a court to block a planned strike by one of the country’s biggest mining unions that the companies say would further hurt the struggling industry. Anglo American Platinum Ltd., the world’s top platinum-group metals supplier, and other producers want the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union to be denied the legal right to start a seven-day strike at…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Hopes of a trade truce between China and the U.S. and a more dovish Federal Reserve are giving South Africa’s rand a boost — and President Cyril Ramaphosa some breathing space as he struggles to stabilize the state-owned electricity company while curbing government debt levels. Given the outlook for South Africa’s economy — sluggish growth, a widening fiscal deficit, and the threat of a credit-rating downgrade to junk — the rand shouldn’t be a…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zimbabwe has no plans to intervene in the market for what’s effectively a new currency, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said. “Anything that we do in terms of coming into the market is to manage the volatility, but not to intervene,” he told reporters Tuesday after a weekly cabinet meeting in the capital, Harare. “The government is staying out of the market because we are too big — if we…