Features

LUANDA (Bloomberg) — A Paris arbitration tribunal rejected an $850 million claim by Atlantic Ventures SA against the Angolan government for canceling a contract to build and operate a $1.5 billion port in the southwest African nation. The company, in which Isabel dos Santos — Africa’s richest woman and the daughter of the oil-rich country’s former president — has a direct stake, must also pay the government’s 133 million kwanzas ($232,000) tribunal fees, the Presidency…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Nigeria’s government is in a London court to ask for more time to appeal a $9.6 billion arbitration award, an amount that is more than the country’s income from oil last year. The country, Africa’s largest crude producer, wants more time to pursue its accusations that the 2010 gas-supply contract with Process & Industrial Developments Ltd. was a sham. Last year, a British judge upheld the arbitration award P&ID…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — African Union-brokered talks ended without an agreement on a disputed dam project on the Nile River’s main tributary, potentially ratcheting up tensions between two key U.S. allies on the continent. The negotiations over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia have again foundered over the pace at which the country plans to fill the 74 billion cubic meter reservoir, stoking Egypt’s concern that it will lose control over its…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) — President Donald Trump is seizing on a string of losses at the Supreme Court to galvanize his political base with calls to remake the judiciary with more conservative judges, a key issue that fueled his first presidential run. Trump has promised a new list of potential Supreme Court nominees this summer, repeating the gambit he used to calm doubts about him among some Republicans in 2016, and demanded…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Donald Trump’s biggest foray into African affairs has not turned out well. The U.S. president’s bid to resolve a long-running dispute over a Nile dam has failed to make a breakthrough, joining his unsuccessful efforts in crises from North Korea to Kosovo. In the case of the Nile, he’s largely fallen afoul of the same intractable regional politics that have bedeviled African leaders for years in their own fruitless…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) — Kenya announced a resumption in international flights from Aug. 1 and lifted a ban on travel into its two biggest cities, saying the East African nation’s counties have reached a “reasonable level of preparedness” to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Travel into and out of the capital, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Mandera will resume from 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a televised speech. Domestic air travel will…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Nigeria’s presidency summoned the head of the nation’s anti-corruption body to discuss the sale of seized assets. Economic and Financial Crimes Commission acting Chairman Ibrahim Magu attended the meeting after receiving an invitation from a presidential panel while en route to another meeting, the agency said Monday in an emailed statement. It denied a report by the online newspaper The Cable that Magu had been arrested. “The EFCC’s boss…