Features

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plans to overhaul the energy industry have some way to go before they provide answers to the nation’s crippling power shortages. Africa’s most industrialized nation has been roiled by rolling blackouts since late 2005, a legacy of state power company Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.’s failure to adequately maintain its plants and invest insufficient new ones. In his state-of-the-nation address on Thursday, Ramaphosa announced a raft…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Social media giants including Facebook and Twitter face the threat of fines if they fail to take down harmful content such as images of child abuse and material inciting violence, under a crackdown launched in the U.K. The government is “minded” to give broadcast regulator Ofcom a role as internet watchdog, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan and Home Secretary Priti Patel said on Wednesday. The proposals are yet to be fleshed out in detail, but the…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – BP Plc pledged to achieve net-zero emissions from its own oil and gas operations and production by 2050 while halving the carbon intensity of all the products it sells, as its new boss sets out his vision for the future. London-based BP became the latest fossil fuel giant to set out an ambitious, yet rather distant, the target for curbing emissions of planet-warming gases. The announcement from incoming Chief…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Wall Street has little use for Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist boasts about his antagonistic relationship with the moneyed class and plans to tax the rich and hamstring banks. Yet the market’s been calm as he climbed in the national polls, notching a win in the New Hampshire primary — the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high Tuesday. The reaction was different last fall, when…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Attorney General William Barr is confronting one of the biggest crises of his tenure after the Justice Department reversed course on a recommendation about how long one of President Donald Trump’s allies should go to prison, prompting a team of career prosecutors to quit the case. Coming after he helped the president navigate the special counsel’s probe of Russian election meddling and prevail in the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S….

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa)- Spain’s Grifols family has prospered with storefront collection centers across U.S. Harry Lee Armstrong is almost broke. But he’s found a quick way to make a little cash. It’s called “plassing.” Laid off from his construction job, Armstrong has driven to a storefront donation center where a valuable global commodity — the golden plasma in human blood — is harvested seven days a week. Wedged between a dental office and a liquor…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed tens of billions of pounds for a controversial new high-speed rail line linking London with cities to the north, despite soaring costs and mounting anger from his own Conservative Party colleagues. The High Speed 2 (HS2) development will become Europe’s largest infrastructure project but it has suffered delays and criticism of its management, with spiraling costs estimated to rise potentially to more than…