Month: August 2020

The initiative intends, therefore, to bring the prices and exchange rates of all African countries into one platform…

American multinational holding company Berkshire Hathaway, owned by Warren Buffett last week announced the acquisition of a certain percentage of Canadian gold mining company,  Barrick Gold.

The deal saw the shares of Barrick Gold soar by 12% after Warren Buffett’s firm bought a stake in the company. Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 20.9 million-share stake in Barrick Gold, valued at about $564m.

However, as this deal was being announced, another deal was being activated in East Africa. Shanta Gold, the London AIM-listed miner announced that it has completed the acquisition of Canadian miner Barrick Gold’s assets in Kenya at a cost of Sh1.4 billion from three subsidiaries of Barrick.

The three subsidiaries include Acacia Exploration (Kenya) Ltd. Approximately US$55 m invested in exploration activities across West Kenya since 2010 by Acacia Mining Plc and previous owners.

Acacia joined the Kenyan market in 2012 after acquiring Aviva Mining Kenya Ltd. It acquired …

Ethiopia wants to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), the historically technocrat country now wants to open its doors and become a market economy.

This means privatizing its industries, a move that the country was previously reluctant to take. However, over the last eight years, Ethiopia has been making major economic reforms and the world has begun to notice.

Under the new liberalization policy, Ethiopia will now privatize some key sectors like its telecom industry and its national pride, the airlines led by Air Ethiopia as well as its banking and logistics sectors.

The world has taken notice and to urge and nudge the country on, the international community has allowed it to resume negotiations with the WTO.

A bid 8 yrs in making

Ethiopia started to make moves towards joining the WTO some 8 years ago when it first filed its application and a Working Party was formed in …

MTN Group appoints Chief Financial Officer of MTN Group Ralph Mupita as the new CEO to take over from Rob Shuter as president and CEO who will take over on September 1.

“After a rigorous and extensive search process, we are pleased to have appointed someone of Ralph’s calibre, experience and ability to fill the group president and CEO position. Ralph’s experience as the group CFO, strong knowledge of our businesses and markets, as well as successful background in financial services, M&A and emerging markets, place him in an excellent position to lead the growth and sustainability of the business going forward,” said MTN Group chairman Jonas Mcebisi.

Since April 2017, Mupita has served as the MTN Group CFO and has played a critical role in the development and execution of the group’s strategy, financial performance, capital allocation processes as well as in the resolution of a number of complex …

RwandAir announced that it will resume flights to Africa with flights to Cotonou, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Lusaka, Libreville and Kilimanjaro as it gradually picks pace to shake off the challenges endured during the coronavirus pandemic.

Currently, Dubai is RwandAir’s only destination outside Africa but the airline has plans to resume flights to Tel Aviv, London and Guangzhou.

Kigali International Airport also receives flights departing for Brussels, Johannesburg, Dakar and to Addis Ababa, with connections to the United States via Ethiopian Airlines.

Since rebranding in 2009, the airline has not turned profitable despite consuming over $2 billion in public funds and loans.

Although it has expressed confidence that an increase in economic activity and tourism will spur it to profitability.

As other regional airlines begin to resume flights and many on the same route, RwandAir will have to brace itself for competition

Measures have been put in place for those …

My July op-ed focused on the increased M&A activities in Africa under Covid-19. Network International announced the acquisition of Africa’s leading online commerce platform, DPO for $288M on 28^th July 2020, confirming my analysis that we are going to see more M&A activities going forward.”

According to Keet van Zyl, Managing Partner of Knife Capital (which turned ten last week), who managed Mark Shuttleworth’s ‘Here Be Dragons’ Fund – this is likely the largest tech acquisition in Africa since Shuttleworth sold Thawte to Verisign for $575m in 1999″. SoftBank, which had a $16.5B loss in Q1, returned to a $12B net profit in Q2, courtesy of the merger and partial sale of its stake in Sprint to T-Mobile, as well as a recovery in its $100B vision fund portfolio. This means global M&A is also picking steam in the “valley of coronavirus” as Masayoshi Son put it.

Under COVID-19, …

In recent history virtually every continent and economic block has been trying to establish common trade area agreements as well as political unions. Africa is no different –SADC, ECA, COMESA, ECOWAS and SACU are just some of the examples of African countries trying to collaborate to drive the many aspects of social and economic development.

It is a system and an idea that promises to accelerate inclusion and promote regional prosperity among neighbours and the AfCFTA (The African Continental Free Trade Area) is rapidly becoming the embodiment of that reality – 28 African countries operating as a free trade area. As expected from an agreement of this magnitude, few people fully understand its complexity and intricacies.

FurtherAfrica spoke to one of AfCFTA’s strongest advocates. Mark-Anthony Johnson, CEO of JIC Holdings – an investment, trading and acquisition entity focused in Africa and emerging economies with roots back to 1985. Mark’s JIC …

MTN Uganda recorded a 9.1 per cent increase in net profit to about $120.47 million for the first six months of 2020, according to the company’s latest interim results.

According to the report, the strong performance of mobile money, data and digital income attributed to the performance.

MTN Uganda overall revenues grew by 7.6 per cent to about $244.97 million in the six months while data incomes saw a 30 per cent growth from about $34.84 million to about $45.45million.

The company’s mobile money which has been another cash source grew by 6.5 per cent to about $58.25 million as its active mobile money subscribers hit 7.4 million an increase from 7.3 million.

Meanwhile, its Voice revenues grew from about $124.67 million to about $128. 2 million as the company reported a 10 per cent growth in subscriber base to 13.2 million, up from 13 million last year.

The number …

The Mozambique business sector reported a loss of $453 million in the first half of 2020 due to the pandemic of COVID-19, the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique (CTA) said.

The Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique (CTA) warned that depending on the evolution of the pandemic and of the economic dynamics in the second half of the year, the situation could worsen. The business lost revenue could rise to 951 million dollars, equivalent to about seven per cent of Mozambique’s Gross Domestic Product.

Presenting a report on the impact of the pandemic in Maputo, the CTA’s acting chairperson, Alvaro Massinga, said that the level of economic activity fell by about 65 per cent in the first half of this year. The hotel and tourism industry were most affected by their level of activity shrinking by more than 75 per cent.

The report also showed that companies were forced …

Uganda’s export earnings increased for a second consecutive month to $ 337.19 million in June 2020 from $290.93 million in May 2020, as the country tries to overcome the effects of the recent lock-down as a measure to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Imports value also increased to $ 543.6 million in June from $ 435.6 million in May 2020 this is according to the July 2020 performance of the Economy report.

According to the report, as the country continued to ease measures put in place to prevent the proliferation of COVID19, there was an improvement in economic activity and international trade.

The report also indicated that the Uganda shilling continued to strengthen against the US Dollar in July 2020, registering an appreciation of 0.9 per cent on account of increased inflows amidst subdued demand.

Also Read: Kenya’s exports surpass pandemic expectations for regional trade

Due to an increase in …