Author: Editorial Staff

HARITH General Partners (Harith) and Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), two pre-eminent institutional investors based in Africa, have merged their power sector assets, expertise and experience to create a new energy entity combining both renewable and non-renewable power generating assets in Africa. On a continent where more than 620 million people live without electricity, this robust partnership has been formed to lead the way in power generation, and the integrated management of power infrastructure assets to deliver the requisite base load generation capacity to drive and accelerate growth in African economies. The joint venture’s near term portfolio supplies reliable energy to…

CELLPHONES and rising connectivity in Africa will give rise to a new market in mobile financial services, creating explosive opportunities for business on the continent, according to research. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that in three years, 250 million Africans without access to traditional banking services ‘will have mobile phones and a monthly income of at least $500.’ That could translate to projected revenues of $1.5bn from mobile financial services, it says in a report released on Tuesday. It is key for a continent where the banking system is hugely underdeveloped. A mere 25 percent of Africans have a…

NIGERIAN consumers are increasingly comfortable with online shopping – both from local retailers and foreign online stores – and are some of the world’s most prolific users of mobile devices to do this shopping. And forecasts say they are going to stay out front when it comes to mobile commerce, says a recent study in Nigeria by Ipsos, a global market research company, on behalf of PayPal. According to the research, Nigeria is home to some of the keenest mobile shoppers on the African continent, and is also the third largest mobile commerce market in terms of the incidence of…

The Niger Delta Avengers militant group has rejected an offer of talks with the government to end its attacks on oil facilities and also said it had blown up a Chevron well in the delta. Attacks by militants on oil and gas pipelines in the southern Delta swamps have brought Nigeria’s oil output to a 20-year lows and helped to push oil prices to 2016 highs. Nigeria’s oil minister had said on June 7 the government would start talks with the Niger Delta Avengers which has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks in the Delta. The Niger Delta Avengers…

An Eritrean man suspected of running a huge human trafficking network that sent thousands of migrants to Europe, leaving many to die on the way, was extradited from Sudan to Italy overnight, officials said. Medhane Yehdego Mered, nicknamed ‘the General’, had been heard on intercepted telephone calls boasting about cramming more people onto rickety boats than other traffickers, prosecutors said. ‘This shows an absolute indifference about the lives of immigrants,’ Reuters reported Italian magistrate Maurizio Scalia as saying. The 35-year-old was arrested in Sudan on May 24, Italian and British officials said, on charges of human trafficking and abetting illegal…

SOME recent reports suggest investors have lost confidence in Africa as an investment destination. This appears to be largely as a result of the recent economic slowdown in some of the key African economies, says Michael Lalor, lead partner at Ernst&Young’s (EY’s) Africa business centre. Indeed, the IMF recently revised its projected growth rate for sub-Saharan Africa for 2016 down again to 3 percent — a year ago it was projecting 6.1 percent growth for 2016. This means that the region will experience its lowest growth rate in 15 years. The reality, too, is that economic growth across the region…

TANZANIA is to support local industries with the establishment of an industrial development bank and reduction taxation on locally produced goods, President John Magufuli said early June. Tanzania aims to become a semi-industrialised nation by 2025. To achieve this, the contribution of manufacturing to the national economy must reach a minimum of 40 percent of the GDP, Tanzania’s 2025 vision indicates. Currently, Tanzania’s industrial sector contributes around 25 percent to the country’s GDP with an average annual growth of 8 percent. In order to accelerate industrialisation, the President has urged banks to lower interest rates for industrial projects. In addition,…

THE successful prosecution of Chadian dictator Hissène Habré has galvanised the movement for a permanent forum for justice in Africa, but several legal roadblocks stand in the way, according to experts. A special court in Senegal, backed by the African Union (AU), sentenced Habré to life in jail on early June for war crimes, crimes against humanity, rape and sexual slavery, an unprecedented conviction that comes more than a quarter century after he left office. The case also set a global precedent as the first time a country has prosecuted a former leader of another nation for rights abuses. The…

Equatorial Guinea’s ministry of mines, industry and energy (MMIE) has launched the country’s latest oil and gas blocks licensing round, EG Ronda 2016. Companies are now able to submit letters of interest to the ministry, and to view the official map of available blocks. The MMIE intends to build upon Equatorial Guinea’s strong reputation for exploration success by inviting oil and gas companies with the requisite financial and technical competency to explore its blocks. A total of 114 discoveries have been made in the country to date, with 48 resulting in discoveries. The discovery success rate of 42 percent is…

THE start of new gas production in Ghana has significantly improved the prospects for long-term growth in the country, although efforts to exploit domestic reserves for local power generation faced a minor setback earlier this year. While Ghana’s hydrocarbons sector has seen relatively stable output over the first few months of 2016, a two-week period of inspection and maintenance work on the Kwame Nkrumah, a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, led to a temporary drop in gas supply to the power sector. The shutdown slowed gas supply to the Volta River Authority’s (VRA) thermal generating facilities in Aboadze,…