Features

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party is on track to win its biggest majority in more than three decades, according to the most hotly anticipated poll of the general election campaign. The Tories will win a majority of 68 seats in the Dec. 12 election, according to a YouGov poll which used a technique that more closely predicted the 2017 election than standard surveys. Such a majority would allow Johnson to deliver on…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Africa, a continent blighted by the world’s highest maternal mortality rate and scant legal protection for women, beats all other regions globally in the proportion of females on company boards. In Africa, one in four board members is female. That’s better than second-placed Europe at 23% and well ahead of global laggard Latin America at 7%, according to a report on gender parity released by the McKinsey Global Institute…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenya should reintroduce the position of the prime minister and name the runner up in presidential contests the leader of the opposition, a panel recommended in a bid to end violent disputes that have marred past ballots. The proposed establishment of the posts is part of a raft of suggestions by the so-called Building Bridges Initiative, which was established by President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga and…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenyan lawmakers said that a proposed supplementary budget could increase public debt to 6.7 trillion shillings ($65.4 billion) by the end of 2019-20, saddling the economy with more liabilities. The National Treasury asked parliament two weeks ago to approve almost 3% extra spending for the fiscal year through June 2020 after revenue collection came in below target. It also wants more funding for President Uhuru Kenyatta’s priority development projects…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Bags of rice, cell phone credit, and mobile phones were just some of the freebies that politicians in the remote West African nation of Guinea-Bissau handed out in the run-up to Sunday’s presidential election. Many voters regarded their generosity with skepticism: Cocaine trafficking has been big business in Guinea-Bissau for at least a decade, and suspicions abound about the origin of some of the 12 candidates’ money. While many…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – A solution to the crisis in social care has eluded both the Conservative and Labour parties. Now, maybe, a consensus is forming. When a topic is both highly controversial and mind-numbingly complex, there’s a rule of politics that says it’s best avoided before an election if at all possible. A botched offering on social care was one of the things that derailed Theresa May’s 2017 U.K. election bid and cost the…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – The European Union’s time frame to complete a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.K. will be “very demanding” as officials race to complete a complicated set of negotiations at an unprecedented pace, according to Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will have only 11 months to negotiate a trade deal with the EU’s 27 remaining members even if an agreement to exit to the bloc goes through the British…