Features

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…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – The White House budget office violated federal law when it withheld about $214 million appropriated by Congress to the Defense Department for security aid to Ukraine, an independent congressional watchdog agency concluded. “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said in a report released Thursday. The Office of Management…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – As he signed an initial trade deal with China on Wednesday, President Donald Trump promised further negotiations to tackle some of U.S. companies’ most long-standing complaints would begin “very, very shortly” and that tariffs on some $360 billion in imports from China would remain in place as leverage. What he didn’t say is that almost no one thinks those negotiations aimed at getting China to rein in its vast web of…

TRIPOLI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Russia and Turkey attempted to broker a truce in Libya. It didn’t go as planned. Khalifa Haftar was expecting the Kremlin red carpet. Instead, he was cooped up in a Russian Foreign Ministry reception building hoping for an audience with Vladimir Putin. In the end, the Libyan military commander lost patience and stormed out. Hours later, he left Moscow in his Dassault Falcon corporate jet bound for the Jordanian capital,…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – President Donald Trump is poised to sign a deal with China on Wednesday that leaves significant tariffs in place and for the first time would punish Beijing if it fails to deliver on pledges related to its currency, intellectual property, and the trade balance. But the question set to dog Trump the moment the ink dries is whether the pact will rewire the relationship between the world’s biggest…