Features

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – U.K. civil servants preoccupied with Brexit are struggling to find time for the 2019 spending review, a set-piece opportunity for Prime Minister Theresa May to show that almost a decade of austerity is at an end. Officials in the Treasury are so consumed with planning for a no-deal exit from the European Union that the spending review has already lost steam, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s government will announce within a month how it plans to fix Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the embattled state utility that supplies more than 90 percent of the nation’s power. There are no easy remedies. The company is 419 billion rand ($30.9 billion) rand in debt, is losing money hand over fist, has way more staff than it needs and its aging and poorly maintained plants can’t always…

SUDAN (Capital Markets in Africa)  – Sudan’s embattled president took aim at activists who’re using social media to organize demonstrations calling for his ouster, saying only elections can bring political change in the protest-wracked African nation. “Changing the government can’t be achieved by using WhatsApp or Facebook, it is only through the ballot box and the Sudanese people are the only body that can determine who is supposed to rule this country,” Omar al-Bashir told a televised…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s minister of mineral resources and chairman of the ruling African National Congress, is facing allegations that he took bribes from Bosasa, the services company accused of paying off politicians in order to win state contracts and avoid prosecution. Richard le Roux, a former regional technical coordinator for a unit of Bosasa, on Thursday told a judicial inquiry that’s probing government corruption how the company spent…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – The head of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and other officials resigned with immediate effect, the government said. Chairman Job Whabira and the other commissioners will step down on Thursday, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda said in a statement handed to reporters in the capital, Harare. “All commissioners have gone on leave pending the finalization of their terminal benefits,” Sibanda said, without providing a reason for…