Features

HARARE (Capital Marketds in Africa) – Zimbabweans are relying on Tesla Inc. to help them pay their bills. Amid power outages of as long as 18 hours a day, Econet Wireless Ltd., Zimbabwe’s biggest mobile-phone operator, is turning to the Palo Alto, California-based automaker and storable-energy company for batteries that can keep its base stations running. The southern African country faces chronic shortages of physical cash, so almost all transactions are done digitally, and many via mobile phones….

LONDON (Capital Marketds in Africa) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “do or die” pledge to exit the European Union by Oct. 31 has increased the likelihood for the hardest form of Brexit, one with no deal in place at all. Without a formal withdrawal accord at the time of the divorce, the U.K. will lose frictionless, duty-free access to the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc. The U.K.-EU trade relationship would immediately revert to commercial rules negotiated…

LONDON (Capital Marketds in Africa) – Boris Johnson’s summer is over. The week that could determine how long he remains prime minister — and how or whether Britain leaves the European Union — is about to begin. The rules of the U.K.’s unwritten constitution are being stretched to the limit, with new precedents being set and cries of foul play arising nearly every day. Johnson’s goal is to stay in power by uniting hard-line Brexit…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – A Scottish judge refused to block Boris Johnson’s plan to suspend Parliament, dealing a blow to lawmakers who argued that there isn’t enough time to thwart a no-deal Brexit. Judge Raymond Doherty in Edinburgh held off granting an emergency injunction against the prime minister’s plan, saying that there is time to hold more hearings on the issue next week. A Belfast court on Friday also put off a decision on…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Senior Tories seeking to stop the U.K. leaving the European Union without a deal and thwart Boris Johnson’s move to suspend Parliament from the middle of next month stepped up their preparations for a showdown with the prime minister next week. Oliver Letwin, the former minister leading efforts in Parliament to stop a no-deal Brexit, said he’s confident he has a plan that will work around the suspension, while ex-Prime…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Imperial Logistics Ltd. is looking to expand into air and sea transportation as the Africa-focused logistics group offers more services to multinationals with sales on the continent. The Johannesburg-based company delivers goods for the likes of U.K. drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Dutch brewer Heineken NV mainly via land routes to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, it wants to add the ability to pick up products from manufacturing sites in Asia to complete the…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Twenty-five years after the African National Congress ended apartheid, it faces being brought down by an increasingly young and urbanized electorate.  In the South African township where Nelson Mandela joined the struggle against apartheid, Lordwick Nxumalo is reduced to hustling for a living. Each day, he and other young jobless men of Soweto hang around on Walter Sisulu Square, waiting to take passport pictures for documents like driving licenses….