Author: Editorial Staff

STRONG GDP growth in Africa has masked disappointing productivity, according to ICAEW’s latest Economic Insight: Africa Q2 report. Over the last fifteen years trade and investment have buffered the continent against the global financial crisis. However, according to the accountancy and finance body, this has hidden low productivity figures – despite much greater potential for economic ‘catch up’. The report notes that from 2000 to 2015, the average GDP growth across the continent was 4.8 percent per annum, a full 2.3 percentage points faster than the global average during the 1990s. This is only marginally slower than the ASEAN region,…

MONEYGRAM continues to expand in Equatorial Guinea with the launch of money transfer services at Banco Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial (BANGE) locations. MoneyGram customers in Equatorial Guinea now have fifteen new convenient locations where they can send and receive money between family and friends. BANGE is one of the leading commercial banks in the country. The bank provides financial services to thousands of customers in seven major cities. Equatorial Guinea is one of the smallest African countries inhabited by 800,000 people. A member of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) and the Economic Community of Central African States…

DENHAM Capital, a leading global energy-focused private equity firm, and GreenWish Partners, a renewable energy investment company dedicated to sub-Saharan Africa, have announced a partnership to develop, build and finance a portfolio of 600 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy assets across sub-Saharan Africa by 2020. The capital commitment will allow the African renewables platform to carry out a $1bn project pipeline. Charlotte Aubin-Kalaidjian, CEO of GreenWish, said, ‘We look forward to partnering with Denham for this expansion phase of GreenWish in sub-Saharan Africa. Independent power producers such as GreenWish are a key solution to the African electricity gap that requires…

GLOBAL renewable energy developer Mainstream Renewable Power has signed $117.5 million  equity investment from investors including IFC, the IFC African, Latin American and Caribbean Fund (ALAC) and the IFC Catalyst Fund, two funds managed by IFC Asset Management Company, Ascension Investment Management and Sanlam to accelerate the build-out of megawatts of wind and solar plants across Africa. The deal, which is subject to shareholder approval, provides equity funding for the Lekela Power platform, a joint venture with the global pan-emerging market private equity firm Actis. The funding package will help Lekela meet its goal of constructing over 1,300MW of badly…

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…