Features

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Google Bay View, the company’s newest campus, consists of three squat buildings nestled near the San Francisco Bay shoreline a few miles east of its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. The first things visitors notice are the roofs. They curve down gently from pinched peaks, like circus tents, sloping almost to the ground. Each roof is blanketed with overlapping solar panels that glisten with a brushed metal sheen on…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Former U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s appointment to a United Nations special envoy role has been scrapped.  “Mr. Hancock’s appointment by the UN Economic Commission for Africa is not being taken forward,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told PassBlue, a news website that specializes in UN coverage, on Friday, adding “ECA has advised him of the matter.”  In an appointment letter to Hancock, Vera Songwe, executive secretary of the ECA, lauded the “success…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – The world’s richest countries are courting South Africa as a model of how to transition to a more climate-friendly future from a dependency on coal. While $5 billion of cheap loans and grants are on offer as a first step, transforming Africa’s most industrialized economy demands more than cash. It needs to win over power brokers like Gwede Mantashe, a former coal unionist who is now energy minister and chairman…

ALGEIR (Capital Markets in Africa) – Algeria’s president said following International Monetary Fund advice to reverse its long-standing policy and take on foreign borrowing would lead to “political suicide,” describing the OPEC member as able to ride out economic troubles exacerbated by the pandemic. “We will never choose that option, it is unthinkable,” Abdelmadjid Tebboune told a select group of journalists in a televised briefing late Sunday. The North African nation will end the year with enough…