Month: January 2020

Christoph Fitih, Director Sales: Africa at Parallel Wireless, predicts that open minds and fair trade will play a leading role in revolutionising the African telecoms market into the next decade

As the new decade dawns, the telecommunications industry (specifically mobile), has finally woken up to the fact that its economics need to change, especially with the advent and expected widespread uptake of 5G. Much of this realisation has been driven by a need to move away from the consolidation of the RAN industry that has seen Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia dominate the space and in the process, creating a closed, almost anti-competitive market.  The development of OpenRAN, which in 2019, really gathered momentum, has really changed the playing field.

OpenRAN by its very nature has also facilitated a more open and collaborative approach among a host of service providers who have collectively, developed more innovative solutions to the rapidly developing …

South Africa, Africa’s most diversified economy has taken a hard hit on its currency as investors grow increasingly anxious over the impact of the spread of corona virus in Africa.

According to a reuters report, investors are slowing down as they are calculating the economic impact of China’s spreading coronavirus outbreak.

According to Reuters, at 0702 GMT, the rand traded at 14.4800 versus the dollar, 0.59 per cent lower than its New York close on Friday.

The South African economy has sustained a rather serious shakedown over the past year, causing its business index to plummet, thus—reports show the sluggish outlook for the local economy added further strain on the currency on Monday.

Global Markets tumbled on Monday as investors grew increasingly anxious about the economic impact of the outbreak of coronavirus, which has taken more than 80 people’s lives.

Further, Reuters noted that a weak growth outlook for …

Israel began exporting natural gas to Egypt on Wednesday being one of the most important deals the countries have been signed since they made peace decades ago.

Dolphinus Holdings, a private firm in Egypt will purchase 85 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas, worth an estimated $19.5 billion, from Israel’s Leviathan and Tamar offshore fields over 15 years.

Yossi Abu, CEO of Israel’s Delek Drilling, one of the partners in Leviathan and Tamar, said the landmark arrangement “marks a new era in the Middle East energy sector.”

two Egyptian industry sources said that Israel will initially export 200 million cubic feet of gas per day to Egypt,
According to Delek, by the second half of 2022 gas from Leviathon will be supplied to Dolphinus at a rate of 2.1 billion cubic meters per year, increasing to 4.7 billion cubic meters per year.

Also Read:Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan set for

The United Kingdom and Egypt announced the establishment of an economic partnership to implement Egypt’s Vision 2030 initiative.

Egypt and the United Kingdom are seeking to improve education and health care as well as promote trade and investment.

According to the partnership, the UK announced it would provide Egypt with £13 million to help accomplish comprehensive economic growth, empower youth, social development, support the neediest groups and develop the business environment.

Also within the framework of this partnership, to support financial inclusion, the Uk will grant Egypt £3 million and about £8 million to increase employment opportunities for young people through developing capacity building programs and supporting the development of the higher education system.

Also Read: UK-Africa Investment Summit 2020

The statement also said that the two countries will work together to prepare technical studies and feasibility studies to implement a number of sustainable infrastructure projects to increase private sector …

The tool will help African governments monitor and eliminate challenges which slow trade costing the continent billions annually…

Nigeria exempts food from Value Added Tax (VAT) as it increases the tax to 7.5 per cent as it seeks to alleviate the cost burden from consumers.

The Value-added tax will be effective from February 1, 2020, the exception of bread, cereals, cooking oils, culinary herbs, fish, flour and starch, fruits, meat and poultry. Others are milk, nuts, pulses, vegetables, natural water, roots, salt, table water and sanitary towels.

On January 13, 2020, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari signed into law the 2019 Finance Bill, increasing VAT and also exempted companies with less than $82,000 capital from paying tax.

Also Read:Nigeria takes on revenue boost and small business support for the economy

According to PWC (a global network of tax consulting form), 48 per cent of national GDP is contributed by SME’s in Nigeria, account for 96 per cent of businesses and 84 per cent of employment.

The Senior Special …

Zimbabwe signed a currency swap deal with China, hoping to stabilise its economy and improve trade.

Mthuli Ncube, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his five-country Africa tour recently where he said the country was following in the steps of Japan, Nigeria and South Africa.

“What this means is that there are those who will be investing in Zimbabwe from China. Those who require their proceeds to be remitted back to China can now do so,” he said.

A currency swap involves the exchange of principal and interest in different currencies. The purpose of a currency swap is to reduce the cost of borrowing a foreign currency. Mr. Ncube said the currency swap will help Chinese investors in bringing in fresh capital into Zimbabwe.  “The idea is that those individuals will then swap currency so that those who are investing in Zimbabwe are able to …

Orange Egypt signed an agreement with the Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD) to build and operate the new administrative capital’s data centre and cloud computing platform.

The data centre is an infrastructure milestone that seeks to establish the concept of the ‘smart capital’ and is considered to be one of the key technological hubs in Egypt and in Africa.

Orange Egypt was awarded the contract to build and operate the data centre according to the latest international standards based on ACUD’s multinational expertise in providing innovative technologies and solutions in collaboration with key international players in the ICT sector.

Also Read: ENGIE to run Orange Group’s mega West Africa data center

Orange Egypt will provide the main infrastructure to establish and operate the data centre, according to the agreement. This will allow the Administrative Capital to exploit smart technologies to provide various services including providing IoT solutions, cloud computing, …

Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper and cobalt producer stands to sustain a serious hit in its mining industry as the leading diversified natural resources producer, Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) had planned to put its Chambishi Metals copper and cobalt refinery in Zambia under maintenance and cut 229 jobs by the end of January.

According to a report by Reuters, the President of Mineworker’s Union of Zambia commented to the news agency that the union was informed of the layoffs as the miner was halting production temporarily due to difficulties sourcing raw materials for the refinery.

Reuters also confirmed that Zambia’s mines minister Richard Musukwa had been informed about the layoffs.

International Trade Administration (ITA) indicates that Zambia possesses the world’s highest-grade deposits of copper and is ranked the seventh largest copper producer and contributes to over 70 per cent of the nation’s foreign export earnings.

Zambia mining industry contributes 12 per …

Zambia’s economy is expected to grow by 3 per cent, according to nation’s President Edgar Lungu who said on Thursday that, the nation’s economic growth will be slightly off the previous forecast of 3.2 per cent.

According to Reuters, President Lungu revealed the growth projection when he was meeting diplomats, and commented on the fiscal deficit which was expected to shrink from 6.5 per cent in 2019 to 5.5 per cent in 2020, while inflation would remain within the range of 6 to 8 per cent.

However, in October 2019, Bloomberg reported that Zambia’s inflation rate remained at a three year high in October and economic growth slowed, complicating the central bank’s task.

Further, annual consumer inflation accelerated to 10.7 per cent from 10.5 per cent in September 2019, whereby Zambia Statistics Agency noted to be the fastest rate of price growth since October 2016.

The economy of Africa’s second-biggest …