Features

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in  Africa): Democrats face dwindling chances to get testimony from former National Security Adviser John Bolton and others in the Senate impeachment trial as the pool of Republicans willing to even consider defying President Donald Trump keeps shrinking. The possibility of new, potentially damaging revelations emerging from testimony or documentary evidence has always been the greatest unknown in a process where there’s little chance that two-thirds of the Republican-controlled chamber would vote to oust the…

President Macky Sall opened the Oil & Gas Council’s 4th MSGBC Basin Summit & Exhibition in Dakar on Wednesday.  Held in partnership with PETROSEN, Senegal’s National Oil Company, the conference played host to the official launch of the country’s first offshore licensing round.  Comprising 12 offshore blocks, it is expected to draw wide interest from a variety of operators given the country has had eight major oil and gas discoveries since 2014, when the Council…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Sanctioned by the West and spurned by China, Zimbabwe has turned to the United Arab Emirates in its latest bid to find a savior that can arrest the collapse of its economy. Zimbabwe’s government has approached the U.A.E. in hopes of selling a stake in its national oil company, according to three companies and government officials familiar with the plan. It also wants companies in the U.A.E. to buy…

TRIPOLI (Capital Markets in Africa): Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lobbed a rare direct attack at the emirate of Abu Dhabi over its backing of Khalifa Haftar and the Russian mercenaries fighting on his behalf in Libya. Abu Dhabi pays for thousands of Russian mercenaries who fight alongside the Libyan general’s forces, which are violating a recent cease-fire brokered by global powers, Erdogan said during a visit to three African states on Monday. The Turkish president’s remarks came shortly after Libya’s…

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) – The Portuguese man behind a website that pulled back the curtain on world soccer’s business dealings also unearthed documents related to the fortune of Africa’s richest woman.   The Portuguese fan was looking for soccer’s secrets when he began hacking into the legal and financial networks supporting the game’s multi-billion-dollar industry five years ago. For years, he plundered internal documents and secret agreements, unmasking questionable practices — and even…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Eleven months of trade talks are not enough for London to offset the loss of its biggest export market. Nor is it enough for Paris, Frankfurt or Dublin. London wasn’t always the be-all-and-end-all for European finance. It took a deregulation drive under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s — known as the Big Bang — and Britain’s contribution to the launch of the European single market in the 1990s to…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – It’s the kind of balancing act Britain may have to get used to as the country forges its way in the world after leaving the European Union. Three days before Brexit becomes reality after years of infighting, the government in London is trying to reconcile an increasingly truculent U.S. with the demands of the domestic market in the debate over whether Huawei Technologies Co. should be involved in upgrading…