Features

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman, built her multi-billion dollar business empire via a series of questionable deals involving Angolan state assets during her father’s 38-year rule of the resource-rich nation, according to a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Dos Santos got access to lucrative deals involving state-owned oil company Sonangol, diamonds, land and telecommunications and funds were diverted to offshore bank accounts linked to her and her…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – In a memorable exchange at Davos last year, tech billionaire Michael Dell was explaining how higher taxes on the rich had never done much good anywhere, when he was contradicted. Actually, said Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they’d worked pretty well within living memory in his own country, the U.S. For an executive crowd that’s thrived under 40 years or more of policies based…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The European Union may deploy a military mission to help enforce an arms embargo and a potential cease-fire in Libya, as the bloc scrambles to contain a conflict that’s drawn in Russia and Turkey and that threatens to destabilize the Mediterranean. While no decisions were taken at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, two officials present in the discussion said there was consensus that preparations should begin…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) Lesotho’s prime minister said he intends to step down, following increased calls for his resignation over the murder of his second wife, which police have linked to the woman he married a little over two months later. Thomas Thabane, 80, was inaugurated as prime minister of the tiny African mountain kingdom two days after his second wife was shot in June 2017. He previously held the post from 2012 to…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) -Internet users across more than a dozen sub-Saharan African nations suffered slow service after two undersea cables to the continent’s western coast were damaged this week. The so-called WACS and SAT3/WASC cable systems are in the Atlantic Ocean and connect South Africa and many other African countries to Europe, Openserve, a unit of South Africa’s biggest fixed-line telecommunications provider, Telkom SA SOC Ltd., said. At least 12 countries besides South Africa…

SUDAN (Capital Markets in Africa) – When disgruntled Sudanese spies took up arms and gunfire rang out across Khartoum, even members of the most powerful pro-government militia were startled. As mutiny rocked three security buildings in the capital on Tuesday afternoon, fighters from the notorious Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group rushed to respond. By the next morning, five people — two of them soldiers — were dead, and the transitional government said the bloodshed sparked…

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman and the daughter of former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, said she may consider running for president, even as she stands accused of causing the government of the oil-producing nation to lose more than $1 billion. “It’s possible,” Dos Santos said in an interview with Portuguese television channel RTP when asked if she would be interested in the role of president. The 46-year-old…