Finance

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Cross-border trade in Africa brings to mind trucks backed up at border posts, corrupt officials and the smugglers trying to avoid them, and just all-around petty bureaucracy. That translates into delays, frustration and higher costs. No doubt it has limited trade between nations on the continent to just 15% of all export and import commerce compared with more than 70% in Europe. In 2020, that’s all supposed to change — or at least…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – MTN Group Ltd. is looking to raise as much as 60 billion rand ($4 billion) from an extended asset-sale plan, with stakes in a major towers business and the carrier’s Nigerian unit among those earmarked for sale. Africa’s biggest mobile-phone company has generated about 14 billion rand since kicking off a strategy to offload non-essential businesses in March, and is ready to step up the process, MTN said in an…

KINSHASA (Capital Markets in Africa): The Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s biggest producer of cobalt, created a state monopoly that will buy all output not extracted by industrial operators in a bid to exert more control over the price of the key ingredient in rechargeable batteries. The central African nation dominates output of the metal, accounting for more than 70% of the global market in 2018. While most Congolese cobalt comes from large, mechanized mines operated…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in  Africa): MTN Group Ltd. pledged to invest $1.6 billion to expand its operations in Nigeria after settling the latest major dispute with authorities in its most profitable market. Africa’s largest wireless carrier announced the investment after a meeting between senior executives including Chief Executive Officer Rob Shuter and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday. The two sides appeared to patch up recent differences and said they’ll work together to improve telecommunications networks in the continent’s most…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in  Africa): The Congress of South African Trade Unions, a key ruling party ally, is pushing senior members of government to consider its proposals to rescue the state’s indebted power utility before next month’s budget. In addition to suggestions it made in a November document that civil servants’ pensions and a state-run unemployment fund be used to cut Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.’s debt by more than half to 200 billion rands ($14…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in  Africa): American authorities have agreed to repatriate $321 million of funds taken out of the country by late military dictator Sani Abacha, according to Nigerian Justice Minister Abubakar Malami. The sum will be sent from the Island of Jersey in the U.S. within the next three months and used to fund ongoing construction projects, including two major highways connecting the commercial heartbeat of Lagos to Ibadan in the country’s southwest, and the…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in  Africa): Nigeria’s biggest city has partially banned the use of motorcycle taxis following an escalating number of fatal accidents, dealing a blow to Softbank Group Corp.-backed OPay and a potential boost to Uber Technologies Inc. The Lagos State Government cracked down on the popular way to dodge traffic congestion in the commercial capital of Africa’s most populous country, calling the bikes and their three-wheel equivalents a “menace” that is responsible for “scary figures”…