Year: 2020

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 …

Barrick Gold Corporation is back to business with Tanzania, after signing an agreement with the government of Tanzania earlier today in the commercial city, Dar es Salaam.

According to a statement from Barrick, the agreement formalizes the establishment of a joint venture between Barrick and the government and showcasing the government full visibility of and participation in operating decisions made for and by the North Mara, Bulyanhulu and Buzwagi mines.

Barrick finds the latter a rather pioneering move that would take its policy of partnership with its host countries to a new level.

Further, the agreement has ratified the creation of Twiga Minerals Corporation (of which initial establishment began last year), the management company jointly owned by the government and Barrick, overseeing the miner’s local operations.

The corporation is now owned 84 per cent by Barrick and 16 per cent by the government. Also, the deal provides for a 50/50 …

Africa’s e-commerce giant, Jumia is taking bold steps to revitalize its profits after experiencing a hard turn in 2019, e-commerce giant co-founder, Jeremy Hodara revealed to Reuters.

According to Hodara, Jumia (which is listed at New Stock Exchange) current focus is on capitalizing its payments and infrastructure network and boost revenue from services for third-party sellers on its online marketplace.

The company managed to attain a $ 4 billion peak value, before plummeting in shares by almost 70 per cent since its initial public offering (IPO) in April 2019.

“We’re going to be extremely disciplined and very focused on our path to profitability,” Hodara told Reuters on Tuesday.

READ:More people in East Africa are embracing Ecommerce

In November 2019, Jumia pulled out in Cameroon and Tanzania, as well as holding its food delivery in Rwanda, thus—still Jumia’s chief has not revealed if the company plans to shrink its market …