Features

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s government revived a so-called Energy War Room to tackle the nation’s electricity crisis, as it brought forward the date when the incoming chief executive officer of the state power utility will start work. The team, to be headed by Deputy President David Mabuza, will seek to avoid a repeat of a nine-day blackout earlier this month that risks tipping the economy into recession. Debt-ridden Eskom Holdings SOC…

KIGALI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Rwandan President Paul Kagame is considering not running for a fourth term once his current tenure ends in 2024 after being in power for more than two decades. The former rebel leader who helped end Rwanda’s 1994 genocide in which about 800,000 people died, has been president since 2000. He won the east African nation’s most recent election in 2017 by a landslide after a referendum that extended presidential tenures to…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – In the offices of the U.K. Labour Party, there were astonishing cheers. At Conservative headquarters, it was as though the air had been sucked out of the room. The moment the exit poll dropped at 10 p.m. on election day in 2017 was the moment Theresa May realized she had spectacularly failed. It was the second time in a row the exit poll — more reliable than normal surveys…

ADDIS ABABA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for forging an end to almost two decades of conflict with neighboring Eritrea, described how his personal exposure to the horrors it wrought drove him to seek a rapprochement. “War is the epitome of hell for all involved,” Abiy, who served as a radio operator in the Ethiopian army and was the only survivor of an artillery…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Here’s something European officials are loath to admit in public: They would quite like Boris Johnson to triumph in U.K. elections. Despite personal and political differences and a lingering lack of trust, those close to EU chiefs privately acknowledge that a strong Johnson victory on Dec. 12 will mean the U.K.’s long-drawn-out departure from the European Union will finally happen, according to more than half a dozen EU officials speaking on condition of…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – He was Tony Blair’s ultra-loyal spin doctor in the era of New Labour. But in this week’s U.K. election, Alistair Campbell is calling on voters to back the rival Liberal Democrats — all because of Brexit. “Voting Labour will just help the Tories,” Campbell wrote in a leaflet to electors in the district of Wokingham, a small town 40 miles west of London where Labour and the Liberal Democrats are vying to…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lead in Britain’s general election was slashed by more than half in a hotly anticipated opinion poll released two days before the vote. The pound fell as much 0.4% on the news. The Tories will win 339 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, Labour 231, the Scottish National Party 41, and the Liberal Democrats 15, according to a YouGov forecast on Tuesday. If the research…