The Editorial Team

Senate Poised to Deliver Infrastructure Win for Biden Agenda

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – The U.S. Senate is heading toward passage this week of a $550 billion infrastructure bill that would provide the biggest infusion of federal spending on public works in decades and mark a major milestone for President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. The Democratic and Republican senators who negotiated the plan spent the weekend haggling over last-minute details and combing through the 2,702-page bill text before submitting it to the…

Bitcoin Drops After Posting Biggest Weekly Gain in Three Months

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Bitcoin pulled back to around $40,000 after climbing over the weekend to the highest levels since May. The largest cryptocurrency fell about 4.8% to $39,280 as of 8:42 a.m. in New York after dropping as much as 5.6% Monday. Other virtual coins including second-ranked Ether also fell. Analysts suggested profit-taking lay behind the declines. This is “just a normal pullback following bullish action,” said Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific…

Post-Apartheid Inequality Sparks Fury in South Africa

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JOHANNESBUGR (Capital Markets in Africa) – The trip from Pretoria to Mabopane starts on a six-lane highway lined with malls and office parks, passes verdant gated communities featuring pools and gardens, and ends in the dusty township north of South Africa’s capital where the trees, shops, and sumptuous homes make way for stark, single-story cinder-block structures in dirt yards. Inside one of them—the Katekani Community Development Project, a collection of brick buildings behind a barbed-wire…

MTN Nigeria to Limit Dollar Spending to Cut Currency Risk

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – MTN Group Ltd. plans to reduce its foreign-exchange spending in Nigeria, its biggest market, and pay more of its costs in the local currency to reduce its exposure to exchange-rate volatility. A recent decision by the Central Bank of Nigeria to devalue the naira by 7.6% against the dollar to 410.7 has had a major impact on the business, Africa’s biggest wireless carrier said in a statement on Friday,…

Kenya Resumes China Debt Repayment With $761 Million

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NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenya has resumed servicing loans owed to China after Beijing’s six-month debt-repayment suspension expired in June, piling pressure on the exchequer. The government began 2021-22 remittances, with the first batch to the Export–Import Bank of China amounting to 82.7 billion shillings ($761 million), according to Kenya’s Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o. Repayments are for debt taken for projects, including a railroad between Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and the port city of Mombasa,…

Gold Can Still Top $3,000 Amid Recovery, Says Quadriga Fund

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Gold is primed to surge to fresh highs as the risks around central banks unwinding massive stimulus are under-appreciated by investors, said a fund manager who forecast the metal’s ascent to a record last year. Diego Parrilla, who manages the $250 million Quadriga Igneo fund, said there isn’t widespread awareness of the long-term damage that’s been caused by ultra-loose monetary and fiscal policies. Artificially low interest rates have created…

WTO Holiday From Vaccine Equity Talks Draws Calls for Action

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – An urgent global effort to rebalance the inequity between rich, vaccinated nations and poor nations sliding further into pandemic misery is colliding with an immovable calendar conflict: the European summer holiday. Next week World Trade Organization delegates are planning to depart Geneva for their August break and, in doing so, pause their fractious debate over a proposal to waive intellectual-property protections for Covid-19 shots until the second week of…

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