Features

LAGOS  (Capital Markets in Africa) — Elections are set to dominate the political calendar in emerging and frontier markets in a year when investors’ focus turns to how quickly governments are able to lift their economies from the global downturn. The results of the votes in nations from South Africa to Mexico will help determine the market winners and laggards amid concern over valuation in EM assets after a rally boosted stocks to a record this year. The…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) — Tesla Inc. will recall about 135,000 Model S and X vehicles in the U.S. after a months-long investigation by the nation’s auto-safety regulator concluded their touch screens are defective. Tesla equipped certain Model S sedans from 2012 to 2018 and Model X crossovers from 2016 to 2018 with Nvidia Corp. processors that are prone to wearing out, Tesla said in a recall report. The flaw can lead to…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Lagos State, which includes Nigeria’s commercial hub and biggest city, approved clinical trial of the drug Ivermectin to assess its effectiveness against Covid-19. Ivermectin is an FDA-approved broad-spectrum anti-parasitic agent that has been shown to have anti-viral activity against a broad range of viruses including SARS-CoV-2 and potentially cut the risk of Covid-19 deaths by as much as 75%, according to researchers at the University of Liverpool. “While this…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ford Motor Co. will plow $1.05 billion into a plant in South Africa — its biggest-ever investment in the country — as the carmaker scales back in other regions including Brazil and Europe. The upgrades to the Silverton plant near the capital, Pretoria, will boost the site’s annual capacity by almost a fifth to 200,000 units and create about 1,200 direct jobs, the company said in a statement on…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) — President Joe Biden’s administration is setting up its trade policy to prioritize enforcement of existing commitments by the U.S.’s partners over negotiating more deals to open new export markets. Biden’s likely strategy for supporting American producers focuses on going after violations via dialogue, work with allies and use of dispute-resolution mechanisms in existing trade agreements rather than following the Trump administration’s more blunt unilateral tool of national-security tariffs,…

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) — The former chief executive officer of Just Eat is putting his own money into one of Egypt’s main food-delivery apps, looking to tap growth in the nation of over 100 million people where practically everything can be ordered by a phone call. David Buttress, who led the London-based company from 2013 to 2017 before its merger with Takeaway.com, said he’s investing a “relatively significant” sum in elmenus, the Egyptian…

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa) — Privinvest Shipbuilding SAL and its billionaire founder Iskandar Safa have placed Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi at the center of the nation’s $2 billion debt scandal. Court documents filed in London reveal that the shipbuilding company and the French-Lebanese businessman made payments to Nyusi and other senior officials after negotiating contracts for government maritime projects. They denied the remittances were bribes or illegal and said they were understood to be…