Features

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The delayed implementation of an African free-trade agreement is a missed opportunity as the pact offers “probably the best form of stimulus” for the continent to overcome the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to an enterprise that liaises between business and the African Union. “We, unfortunately, don’t have the ability to play with quantitative easing and the exercise of printing money,” Paulo Gomes, the vice president of the…

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Africell, a London-based telecommunications company, will go ahead with a final offer for Angola’s fourth mobile license even as the African nation struggles with the worst recession since the end of a civil war in 2002. The company will submit the application by May 1, according to Chief Investment Officer Ian Paterson. The Angolan government, which last month picked it as the only candidate for the 15-year mobile license, will have…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) — Joe Biden is trying to win over progressives by courting the movement’s leaders and backing their calls for significant increases in pandemic relief, yet faces an uphill fight to convince skeptics on the left he won’t abandon working people in favor of Wall Street. Since the economic crisis began with the coronavirus pandemic, he has shifted some of his stances leftward, calling for trillions of dollars more in…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) — How much more calamity can East Africa take? Already struggling with the twin crises of the coronavirus pandemic and a Biblical scourge of locusts, the region is now being lashed by exceptionally heavy rainfall, with floods that threaten life and livelihood from Ethiopia to Tanzania, and all parts in between. For the continent’s most economically vibrant region, the trifecta of tribulations may well add up to a fourth: food…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Chinese authorities acted late to contain COVID-19 because of local governments’ initial confusion and obfuscation of the mysterious illness, and they then had to resort to extreme social-distancing controls and lockdown measures. The new infections curve in China was also flattened through large-scale virus testing, which led to more accurate diagnosis and ultimately slowed the contagion. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan quickly learned from this example and were able…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Regional financial integration refers to a process, market-driven and/or institutionalized, that broaden and deepen financial links within the region. At the very least, this process involves eliminating barriers to cross border investments and differentiated treatment of foreign investors. Further deepening of financial links can take the form of harmonizing national policies, laws, and institutions. Over time, cohesion of regulatory frameworks, operational structures and information systems, and convergence of prices…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – From Johannesburg to Lagos, Cairo to Dakar, Kinshasa to Kigali, Nairobi to Accra, etc., the debate on how Africa should respond to the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is raging. At an African regional policy platform, I had expressed some of these (personal) views some weeks ago but I have been encouraged by most members to circulate them in Africa beyond the platform. This year, 2020, begins a new decade…