Author: Editorial Staff

SOUTH African deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa has criticised the corruption that has damaged the ruling party under President Jacob Zuma, opening a divide in the African National Congress months ahead of a leadership contest. When the ANC picks Zuma’s successor in December, unionist-turned-business tycoon Ramaphosa is expected to face off against veteran politician Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former African Union chairwoman and Zuma’s ex-wife. Ramaphosa is viewed as more investor friendly and has pledged to fight the corruption that has plagued Zuma’s tenure. Dlamini-Zuma appeals to ANC grassroots and has the support of Zuma’s well-established patronage network. Zuma’s business friends, the Guptas,…

THE African Development Bank (AfDB) has called for the empowerment of small and medium operators in the textiles, apparel and accessories sectors as a deliberate job creation strategy. The AfDB made the call at the recently concluded Small Business Indaba held late June in Gauteng, South Africa. The main objective of the Small Business Indaba was to provide small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMMEs) with the tools and network to grow their manufacturing operations to the next level of innovation and job creation. ‘Textile and clothing is the second largest sector in the developing world after agriculture. This sector is dominated…

LEAVING behind chic gowns and catwalks to stomp in the mud in heavy work boots, Guinean former fashion model Tiguidanke Camara has made herself West Africa’s first woman to own a mine. In the small forest village of Guingouine, in the west of Côte d’Ivoire, Camara runs a team of 10 geologists and labourers who are probing the soil for gold deposits. She readily wades into a mucky pond to help take laboratory samples. ‘When I was a model, I showed off for the jewellers. They have licences in Africa to provide their precious stones,’ says Camara amid a swarm…

GHANA will see robust economic growth in the next few years underpinned by rising oil and gold exports, analysts have said. Private and government consumption will also see gains, although growth in these subcomponents will be relatively constrained in the face of the still elevated interest rates and efforts by the Ghanaian government to maintain its deal with the IMF. ‘Ghana’s real GDP growth will rebound in the next year after a slowdown in oil production saw growth weaken between 2014 and 2016,’ say analysts at London-based economic research firm, BMI. Rising oil output and improving cocoa and gold production…

GHANA, Botswana and Burkina Faso have achieved ‘good or overall satisfactory ratings’ in a cross-country study of governance of extractive industries by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI). The NGRI’s 2017 Resource Governance Index found the majority of governments inadequately govern their oil, gas and mining sectors, saying 66 countries were found to be weak, poor or failing in their governance of extractive industries, while less than 20 percent of the 81 countries assessed achieved good or satisfactory overall ratings. The cross-country study of extractives governance is the most comprehensive of its kind to date. It is based on new…

KENYA, the world’s biggest exporter of black tea, expects production of the leaves to rise about 20 percent by the end of the decade, as farmers harvest from new bushes, according to the industry regulator. Output is projected to jump to 500,000 tonnes in 2020 from a projected 412,000 tonnes in 2017, after a drought damaged plants in most growing areas, said Samuel Ogola, head of the Tea Directorate. Most regions in Kenya received below 75 percent of their seasonal long-term average between March and May, according to the nation’s meteorological department. ‘There is a lot of replanting of tea…

CHINA is Africa’s largest economic partner. Yet it has been a challenge to understand the full extent of the partnership due to a dearth of data. A new report by McKinsey Africa finds that its involvement is bigger and more multifaceted than previous studies suggest. Through a study conducted across eight countries that together make up about two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP, the report finds that there are already over 10,000 Chinese firms operating in Africa—four times the previous estimate. About 90 percent of these are private firms, of all sizes and operating in diverse sectors, with about a third…

THE United Nations has called it one of Africa’s biggest remaining wilderness areas. Now a dispute over a planned hydropower dam in Tanzania’s Selous wildlife reserve pits the country’s president against conservationists who say the project could cause irreparable damage to the UNESCO World Heritage site. Early this month, a few days after President John Magufuli said the Stiegler’s Gorge dam will be built ‘come rain, come sun,’ the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) conservation group said in a report that the project threatens an important wetland as well as the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people in impoverished areas, reliant…

THE Climate Investment Funds (CIF) awarded Liberia a $23.25 million grant to help transform the country’s renewable energy sector. The project aims at developing a 9.8 MW hydropower plant at Gbedin Falls on the Mano River in Nimba County, and provide a low-cost, sustainable and reliable source of electricity to Liberia. The project will be funded by Scaling-up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP), a programme under the CIF which objective is to empower transformation in developing countries by demonstrating the economic, social and environmental viability of renewable energy. ‘Liberia has one of the lowest electricity access rates in the world with…

BP will book a $750 million charge for unsuccessful exploration campaigns in Angola, the company said on, a write-off that will weigh on its second-quarter results. The British oil and gas company said it has decided to relinquish its 50 percent interest in Block 24/11 off the coast of southern Angola and that Katambi, a gas discovery made in the block in 2014, had been deemed uncommercial. ‘The write-off is fairly chunky, even by BP’s standards, for one asset,’ said Jack Allardyce, oil and gas analyst at Cenkos Securities. The charge will not impact cash flow and will not attract…