Features

As Commodities Roar, Africa Wants Bigger Slice of the Mining Pie

Posted on by The Editorial Team
As Commodities Roar, Africa Wants Bigger Slice of the Mining Pie

LUSAKA (Capital Markets in Africa) – One by one, the biggest names in African mining are getting squeezed. The tactics might be blunt, but the message is clear: the countries where they operate want a bigger share of the proceeds. The collapse in commodities through 2015 hobbled some of Africa’s biggest resource economies, stunting growth and leaving budgets short. Since then a recovery in prices has sent the continent’s biggest miners soaring, boosted profits and…

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Smugglers Cheer as Nigeria Tries to Keep Foreign Rice Away

Posted on by The Editorial Team
Smugglers Cheer as Nigeria Tries to Keep Foreign Rice Away

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – At Nigeria’s normally manic border post of Seme, Lasisi Fanu says business has all but ground to a halt. He and other customs agents who help clear goods coming into Africa’s biggest economy from its smaller neighbour Benin say the long lines of trucks loaded with rice that used to jam the crossing have dwindled. The slowdown is a result of import restrictions and tighter border policing as President Muhammadu Buhari seeks to…

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Rising Political Violence Stalks African `Island of Peace’

Posted on by The Editorial Team
Rising Political Violence Stalks African `Island of Peace’

DAR ES SALAM (Capital Markets in Africa) – An opposition politician and a campaigner were hacked to death with machetes. A lawmaker’s car was riddled with bullets and he was left fighting for his life. These shadowy attacks weren’t in one of East Africa’s war zones, but in Tanzania — a country that hasn’t seen serious upheaval in decades and whose populist president, John Magufuli, is on a mission to revitalize the region’s second-biggest economy. With the unidentified perpetrators still at…

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Gordhan Plans Sweeping Changes for South African State Firms (1)

Posted on by The Editorial Team
Gordhan Plans Sweeping Changes for South African State Firms (1)

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Extensive changes are in the offing at South Africa’s troubled state-owned companies as new Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan moves to tackle their many management and financial failings. Power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. and several other state entities have been caught up in graft and management scandals over recent years and repeatedly called on the state to bail them out as their debt ballooned to unsustainable levels. Former union boss and…

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Kenya Opposition Urges Probe of Cambridge Analytica Role in Vote

Posted on by The Editorial Team
Kenya Opposition Urges Probe of Cambridge Analytica Role in Vote

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenya’s biggest opposition party called for an independent probe of Cambridge Analytica’s role in last year’s protracted presidential elections that were marred by violence. “We would be interested in the truth about the role of Cambridge Analytica in spreading divisive propaganda in our election cycle,” Orange Democratic Movement Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna said Tuesday by phone from Nairobi, the capital. “We support an inquiry into their involvement.” Channel 4, a…

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Buhari’s Trump Card for Nigeria’s 2019 Vote: Weak Opposition

Posted on by The Editorial Team
Buhari’s Trump Card for Nigeria’s 2019 Vote: Weak Opposition

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Samuel Okunola shares the frustration of many Nigerians with the man he voted for three years ago, President Muhammadu Buhari. The 52-year-old tailor no longer feels he can support him in elections next year, but he doesn’t see an alternative. “I can’t vote for Buhari in 2019,” Okunola said in an interview at his shop in the upscale Victoria Island district in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city. “I’m looking for someone…

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South Africa Awaits First Ratings Verdict of Ramaphosa Era

Posted on by The Editorial Team
South Africa Awaits First Ratings Verdict of Ramaphosa Era

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa will probably escape a junk assessment from Moody’s Investors Service this week in the first such verdict on the country’s creditworthiness since Cyril Ramaphosa came to power. The change in leadership last month from the troubled era of Jacob Zuma will allow Africa’s most-industrialized economy to cling on to the only major investment-grade rating it has left, according to all 15 respondents in a Bloomberg survey of economists and analysts. The rand has rallied and business…

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