Features

ADDIS ABABA (Capital Markets in Africa) – An Ethiopian Airlines Group flight almost had a mid-air collision with a Neos SpA plane in Kenyan airspace last week, according to tracking website Flightradar 24. ET858 “narrowly avoided” NO252 at 37,000 feet, the flight tracker said on Twitter. NO252 is the flight between Zanzibar in Tanzania, Kenya’s resort city of Mombasa and Verona, while ET858 is Ethiopian Airline’s route from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Addis Ababa, the Horn of…

KIGALI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Rwandan opposition parties won just four seats in parliamentary elections — but that’s enough for one of their leaders to hail a victory for democracy in the tightly controlled East African nation. The outcome of the Sept. 3 vote marks the first time a party not in the Rwandan Patriotic Front coalition has secured lawmakers since the country was torn apart by a 1994 genocide. Provisional results show the…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Steinhoff International Holdings NV ex-Chief Executive Officer Markus Jooste said he wasn’t aware of any financial irregularities and quit as head of the global retailer after disagreeing with the board on how to deal with a dispute with auditors Deloitte LLP. In his first public appearance since the accounting crisis that wiped billions of euros of the company’s market value in December, Jooste challenged the widespread view that he is responsible for…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – U.S. officials have made no link between South Africa’s plan to expropriate land without compensation and the country’s access to trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said. One of the conditions for being eligible for AGOA, which favours 39 African nations by eliminating import levies on more than 7,000 products, is the protection of private property rights. Trade union Solidarity has warned…

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Egypt has selected Citigroup Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. to hedge against fluctuations in global oil prices, two Egyptian officials said. Egypt announced several weeks ago that it was seeking to protect itself against sudden increases in the price of crude oil and was negotiating with global banks. It expects to begin hedging at the end of this year or early in 2019, the officials said, speaking on condition of…