Finance

ABIDJAN (Capital Markets in Africa) — The African Development Bank’s board decided the lender should order a new independent probe of its president, Akinwumi Adesina, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected an internal investigation that cleared him of allegations of favoritism, according to two people familiar with the board’s deliberations on the matter. Africa’s largest multilateral lender agreed to the inquiry after several foreign governments backed the Treasury’s criticism of a bank-led examination into…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) — U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw altogether from the World Health Organization, a move that would leave Chinese leader Xi Jinping as the most prominent voice leading the global fight against the pandemic. In a four-page letter detailing his grievances with the WHO, Trump called on the group to “demonstrate independence from China,” renewing a complaint that led him in April to temporarily suspend U.S. funding. He…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — The World Bank urged private creditors and the world’s poorest nations to accelerate debt relief talks to help mobilize resources to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The Group of 20 largest economies agreed in April to suspend about $20 billion in debt servicing payments for 73 nations, more than half of them in Africa. The group has called on private creditors to do the same, but efforts have been delayed…

LUSAKA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Zambia is seeking to restructure its debt after years of “over-ambition” in borrowing to plug an infrastructure deficit, Finance Minister Bwalya Ng’andu said. The southern African nation has stopped taking on new commercial debt and is seeking to cancel some loans that it’s contracted but not yet received, he said in an interview with the state broadcaster on Sunday. Zambia also aims to restructure loans already disbursed as the…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — China, Africa’s largest bilateral creditor, is likely to agree to delay but not forgive its $152 billion of loans, an approach at odds with prior forbearance plans from groups including the Paris Club, according to a top Johns Hopkins University researcher. “The Chinese have always done their lending on the idea that individual projects contribute to structural transformation and economic development,” said Deborah Brautigam, who heads the China Africa Research…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) — Americans will likely get Sanofi’s Covid-19 vaccine before the rest of the world if the French pharmaceutical giant can successfully deliver one. That’s because the U.S. was first in line to fund Sanofi’s vaccine research, Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson said in an interview with Bloomberg News. He warned that Europe risks falling behind unless it steps up efforts to seek protection against a pandemic that’s killed more than 290,000…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Citigroup Inc. is stepping up its role as a mediator between borrowers in sub-Saharan Africa and institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to provide access to cheaper financing in markets hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The importance of multilateral lenders, including others like the African Development Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corp., is growing as lockdowns to contain the spread of Covid-19 slow economic growth,…