Features

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee has declared the outbreak of coronavirus in China a “public health emergency of international concern.” The declaration is often referred to by its initials — PHEIC, pronounced “fake” — but it gives the WHO real capabilities to affect the course of an epidemic. Governments and companies around the globe are already scrambling to contain the illness, which has shown up in a smattering of cases beyond China. But the…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – The most consequential day in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial begins in the Senate on Friday, with Republican leaders likely to muster enough votes to block witnesses and rapidly move to acquit the president. The decision late Thursday by Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican who had been considered a potential supporter of testimony, to vote against new evidence largely dashed Democrats hopes of prevailing. His announcement is a victory…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Now, as some mourn and others celebrate, the U.K. must find itself again. At 10 a.m. inside Aux Merveilleux de Fred, a patisserie in the heart of London’s French quarter, the air is thick with the aroma of butter. Aicha Boubakri, 30, is arranging neat rows of pastel-colored cream pastries in front of the bakery’s only customer. “It’s a bit sad—the fact that the U.K. will no longer be…

KINSHASA(Capital Markets in  Africa): A group of Democratic Republic of Congo citizens asked the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office to recognize them as victims in its investigation of alleged corruption by Kazakh mining company Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. The 16 Congolese say they lost jobs, health care, and community development projects when a copper and cobalt tailings project was shut down near Kolwezi, southeastern Congo, in 2009, according to a statement by Rights and Accountability in…

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…