Trending
- New $900,000 initiative aims to boost sustainable trade in Tanzania
- Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) pride in its African roots
- AIM Global Foundation pushes for stronger Gulf-Africa trade partnerships
- Investment opportunities in South Sudan’s emerging gold industry
- Family planning drive in Kenya gets 450,000 self-injectable contraceptive doses from UK
- AfDB commits $2 billion to revolutionise clean cooking in Africa, save forests
- The harsh realities of family laws for African women revealed
- Kenyan home buyers shift preferences, seek affordable housing despite market downturn
Opinion
- Half of OPEC Member Countries are African and this includes the continent’s most populous country, Nigeria, and the largest by area, Algeria.
- OPEC also counts Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Libya as Member Countries.
- Additionally, two African countries are part of the historic ‘Declaration of Cooperation,’ between OPEC and non-OPEC producing countries, namely Sudan and South Sudan.
Since assuming the office of OPEC Secretary General almost two years ago, I have had the privilege of visiting every African OPEC Member Country, as well as several other African countries. Every visit has reaffirmed my firm conviction that the future is bright for Africa and that the oil industry can play a constructive role in that future. Our Organization stands ready to offer any support it can to help this great continent realize its awesome potential.
OPEC takes great pride in its strong and enduring African connections, heritage and identity. Half of …
- Africa is experiencing growth in the export of goods and services and its economics outline promising opportunities for further growth.
- As trade volumes continue to rise and digitalization shapes e-commerce, customs, port, and border administrations must adapt quickly to ensure smooth clearance processes, accurate tracking, regulatory compliance, and timely delivery.
In today’s fast-paced world of trade, the demand for efficiency and transparency has never been more pronounced. Digitalization and cutting-edge technologies have continued to streamline trade processes fostering a more efficient trading ecosystem.
Annually, the European Commission’s Customs Union manages a staggering €3.5 trillion in goods trade, highlighting how vital it is to have smooth customs and clearance control checks. In the past decade, Africa has experienced growth in the export of goods and services and its economics outline promising opportunities for further growth aimed at facilitation and integration.
As trade volumes continue to rise and digitalization shapes e-commerce, customs, …
- Artificial intelligence in Africa can potentially propel the fintech industry into a new era of financial inclusion.
- AI tools can analyse data from client discussions, producing legal documents in simple language and at a fraction of what it would typically take to draft a contract.
- Banks, for example, can make their services more affordable to their customers by rolling out AI-powered chatbots to handle routine queries while sparing them from having to travel to a bank branch.
It’s difficult to imagine a time before the widespread adoption of mobile technology in Africa – particularly where financial services are concerned. For millions of unbanked people, transactions were limited to cash, postal services or even the barter system.
Now, in much the same way as mobile payments completely disrupted the status quo, AI has the potential to propel the fintech industry into a new era of financial inclusion. And perhaps most exciting …
On the 10th of July 2020, Helios Holdings Limited announced a merger with Fairfax Africa Holdings Corporation to form Helios Fairfax Partners Corporation – a pan Africa focused alternative investment manager.[1] On the same day, Eversend, an African fintech startup also announced over a $1M raise through crowdfunding.[2] Prior to that Helios announced a $100M investment from the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) into their fund IV.[3] On the 1st of July 2020, our portfolio company, www.hotelonline.co announced the acquisition of two travel tech companies.[4] On 30th June 2020, www.msfafrica.com announced the acquisition of fellow fintech Beyonic based in Tanzania.[5] On 23rd June, 2020 www.acumen.org announced their exit from KopaGas of Tanzania as part of the $25M acquisition by Circle Gas.[6] Then on 22nd January 2020, www.mypaga.com announced the acquisition of Apposit an Ethiopian software company as the entry strategy …
Rarely does any so-called “world leader” impress me. Some of them probably mean well in that superior, “I know better than you do what’s good for you” kind of way.
But in the big scheme of things, they are all elected for very short periods of time in office. Australian Prime Ministers get only three years at a time. US Presidents get four, maximum eight years.
In my view, that means they have little or no realistic chance to effect meaningful change for the good and leave their mark, unless they attempt something radical and reckless in the short term, pandering to certain interest groups.
Therein lies the problem. It takes much longer to effect meaningful change.
To cut to the chase, the list of world leaders, or former world leaders who served in my own adult life-time, whom I admire, is pretty short.
There are two:
- Nelson Mandela.
In this column called “The Indicator,” we will be taking an economic or financial statistic from East Africa and breaking it down into bite-sized nuggets of knowledge for investors.
This month’s indicator figure is 597,028,294
597,028,294 what?
597,028,294 US dollars is the projected cumulative annual cost of cyber security attacks across East African Community (EAC) countries for 2020 as extrapolated from a 2017 study “Demystifying Africa’s Cyber Security Line”.
What is a cyber security attack?
A cyber security attack often called a “hack” is when a nefarious individual or group uses a computer to invade the computer or the computing network of a person or company.
Cyber attacks can come from external attackers such as cybercriminals seeking to steal money, damage the reputation, or block access to computing resources in order to extort ransom money from a company. Cyber attacks can also come from “insiders” — frustrated current or former …
President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel once said “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. It provides the opportunity to do things that were not possible to do before”.[1] When the COVID-19 crisis hit the global north the fear was that it would be most devastating in Africa with Bill Gates predicting that ten million lives would be wiped out by the virus.[2] But he was wrong because African leaders did what was not possible before – they locked down their countries and instituted adherence to the protocols of social distancing and washing of hands. These preventive measures and the sudden change of behavior slowed down the virus’s serious impact in Africa. According to Harvard Health preventing the spread of the virus is rooted in behavioral change.[3] Starting up new behavior in the new normal was what the US and Europe could not …
As African oil and gas countries struggle with Covid-19’s devastating impact on demand, two international groups seem to be celebrating it.
Earlier this month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) described the low oil prices caused by the pandemic as a “golden opportunity” for governments to phase-out fossil fuel support and usher in an era of renewable energy sources.
“Subsidising fossil fuels is an inefficient use of public money and serves to worsen greenhouse emissions and air pollution,” OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said in a joint OECD-IEA statement. “While our foremost concern today must be to support economies and societies through the Covid-19 crisis, we should seize this opportunity to reform subsidies and use public funds in a way that best benefits people and the planet.”
I would argue that the OECD and IEA don’t necessarily know what’s best for the people …
A few weeks ago, I was positively surprised to see a sign in a sports shop in Karen, stating that they no longer accepted cash, only cards and mobile money. Until that time, “no-cash” policies in shops was something I had only seen in the Scandinavian countries, and even there, it is still rare. Since the start of the pandemic, however, digital-only payment policies have proliferated in Kenya, and are starting to become commonplace.
Cash as a payment method has been in a slow, terminal decline in Kenya for many years, but it has managed to survive, until now.
Kenya has long been a forerunner in terms of digital payments in Africa. Even as far back as in the Moi era, many shops and supermarkets, most upscale restaurants, and virtually every hotel accepted Visa and Mastercard. This was at a time when Ethiopia had one single bank branch in the …
