Features

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Yesterday I casually suggested that the ideal thing to turn into a smart contract on the blockchain is an interest-rate swap: It’s just a series of exchanges of money, with no need to do anything in the real world, so it is easy to encode in  computer instructions. But one reader correctly objected that the real meat of an interest-rate swap as a contract is its credit terms. An interest-rate swap is an unfunded way to get interest-rate…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – The attempts of the new leaders of South Africa’s ruling party to root out corruption and boost the ailing economy may mean the nation can avert another downgrade by rating companies, central bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said. “Without pre-empting what the ratings agencies would say, South Africa is in a much better space now than where it was when previous ratings actions took place,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s main opposition party is proving to be its own worst enemy as it bids to topple the ruling African National Congress from power in next year’s elections. Instead of capitalising on voter antagonism toward the ANC and President Jacob Zuma over a succession of scandals, the Democratic Alliance has stumbled, with its mayors’ performance drawing criticism in several of the biggest cities it runs, including Cape Town and…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zimbabwe, which has the world’s second-biggest platinum reserves, may lift a requirement that companies mining the metal or diamonds must be at least 51 percent owned by black citizens of the country, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said. Mnangagwa, who became president in November after Robert Mugabe resigned under pressure from the military, has announced that the ownership requirement on all other minerals will be abolished. The government needs to assess its platinum and…