Finance

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africsa) – The head of South Africa’s state power utility needs to substantially reduce its 402 billion rand ($28 billion) of debt to realize his vision of transforming the coal-addicted behemoth into a leading green-energy producer and create as many as 300,000 jobs in the process.  Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. supplies more than 90% of the nation’s electricity, the bulk of it from coal, and emits more than two-fifths of the nation’s…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – AFC Capital Partners plans to raise $2 billion to fund infrastructure projects in Africa that will make it more resilient to climate change. The asset management company, a unit of the Africa Finance Corp., will raise an initial $500 million in its debut offering over the next year and the full amount over the coming three years, it said in a statement.  While Africa produces just 4% of the world’s…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – When Anthony Stimler left Glencore Plc in August 2019, he had two big secrets: For a dozen years, he’d paid millions in bribes to African officials and intermediaries. And he was now helping a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the company and numerous former colleagues. Corruption isn’t exactly unheard of in the extraction and trading of commodities, especially in the developing world. But details of Stimler’s cooperation deal, obtained…

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Troops from Mozambique and Rwanda retook a port town at the heart of a four-year insurgency that led to the suspension of a $20 billion project by TotalEnergies SE. Soldiers from the two countries took back Mocimboa da Praia, which insurgents with ties to Islamic State have held for a year, the Rwanda Defence Force said in Twitter post on Sunday. The Mozambican defense ministry later confirmed the development, saying operations continued to…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – MTN Group Ltd. plans to reduce its foreign-exchange spending in Nigeria, its biggest market, and pay more of its costs in the local currency to reduce its exposure to exchange-rate volatility. A recent decision by the Central Bank of Nigeria to devalue the naira by 7.6% against the dollar to 410.7 has had a major impact on the business, Africa’s biggest wireless carrier said in a statement on Friday,…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – President Joe Biden dismissed concerns that the U.S. would experience persistent inflation as the economy emerges from the pandemic while cautioning that restaurants and others in the hospitality sector might take longer to recover. “There will be near-term inflation” because the economy is picking back up, Biden said Wednesday night at a CNN town hall in Cincinnati. But most economists believe that “it’s highly unlikely that it’s going…