• The continent spends over USD60 billion yearly on food imports that it could generate domestically.
• African countries have allocated large sums to agriculture, but according to experts, this is insufficient.
• As a result, countries are experiencing deficits even as governments continue to spend billions of dollars bolstering their military defenses, which fuels conflict, displacement, and hunger.

• African Hidden Champions (AHC) is an initiative that seeks to showcase exceptional growth stories of unique African startups.
• The AHC initiative has led to several breakthroughs for various African startups.
• AfDB and AHC partnership is a stepping stone that would provide financial inclusion and regional industrialization.

AfDB has announced a new partnership with the African Hidden Champions to promote and empower local startups.

African Hidden Champions (AHC) is an initiative that seeks to showcase exceptional growth stories of unique African startups. Essentially AHC seeks potentially revolutionary companies that are building Africa’s startups to scale on a global scale.

Africa Foresight Group and German Investment Cooperation co-founded this initiative to shed light on Africa’s potential as a continent. They created AHC for the primary purpose of helping firms on their growth journey by telling their stories, exposing them to new markets and providing funding and technical assistance if need be.

Dr …

• Uganda, Nigeria and DRC are the latest beneficiaries of a multinational project initiated by the African Development Bank
• The Creating Sustainable Youth MSMEs Through Urban Farming (SYMUF) project is intended to create jobs and improve livelihoods for the youth in the three African countries 
• The initiative will support young farmers who are attracted to urban farming

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched a multinational project to create jobs and improve livelihoods for youth in three African countries.

The Creating Sustainable Youth MSMEs Through Urban Farming (SYMUF) initiative will support young farmers in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda who are attracted to urban farming.

AfDB is partnering with a consortium of incubation centres in participating countries to implement the project.

They are the Africa Projects Development Centre (APDC) in Nigeria, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA-Bukavu) in the DRC, and the African Agribusiness Incubation …

The project emphasises that young people are starting businesses, which is essential to meeting our lofty employment goals.

Through a public-private partnership model, the alliance aims to assist the creation of national institutions that will scale up financial and technical support for young entrepreneurs and increase their capabilities.

The African Development Bank created the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank as a unique value proposition that integrates and anchors work to create African entrepreneurship ecosystems.

The bank will coordinate the necessary financial and non-financial parties and partners through this project to fulfil their responsibilities for supporting young entrepreneurs through mentoring, training, experience and knowledge exchange, and other means.…

If fully implemented, AfCFTA could speed up wage growth for women and lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035, the World Bank report has found.

An article by Namibia Economist, dated July 29, 2022, suggests that achieving these gains will be particularly important given the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is expected to cause up to US$79 billion in output losses in Africa from 2020.

• Real income gains from full implementation of the AfCFTA agreement could increase by 7 per cent, or nearly US$450 billion by 2035.
• AfCFTA would significantly boost African trade, particularly intra-regional trade in manufacturing.
• Manufacturing exports would gain the most, 62 per cent overall, with intra-Africa trade increasing by 110 per cent and exports to the rest of the world rising by 46 per cent.

COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to trade across the continent, including critical goods such as …

Senegal’s President Macky Sall claimed Japanese firms have the technical and financial capacity to establish up partnerships in Africa while Moussa Faki Mahamat, who is the African Union Commission chair praised Japan’s education and training achievements. He lauded a Japanese effort that taught nutrition to 1,000 young Africans.

African countries would need major financial resources to deal with Covid-19, climate change, and Russia’s war in Ukraine said the African Development Bank chief.

“Now is the time to assist the African Adaptation Acceleration Program to mobilize $25 billion for climate adaptation in Africa,” Adesina added.

AfDB’s African Emergency Food Production Facility, started in May 2022, is providing US$1.13 billion to 24 nations for emergency food production. The Bank approved the facility early in 2022 to prevent the Ukraine war’s food and fertilizer disaster.…

• AfCFTA testing new tool to measure ease of trade among African countries
• Early test results indicate major gender parity issues
• AfCFTA secretariat to seek national policy change to ease cross border trade

So you wish to invest in Africa, with 51 countries to choose from, what factors are going to guide your decision? Once you have overcome that huddle, comes another matter to address and that is ‘how easy is it to do businesses between said African countries?’

The second part of the question is what we will focus on here, how easy is it to do business between and among various African countries.’ There already exist several trading blocs and free trade zones etc and finally the largest of them all the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has finally been passed and is in action.

So what does this mean for investors, for businesses seeking to trade between …

The practical implementation of the AfCFTA, the expanding middle class, the evolving consumer market, enhanced use of financial technology and services, and the efficiency of the vibrant private sector will all be enablers of African export diversification and long-term economic growth.…

The most significant concern is Africa’s susceptibility to growing inflation in developed and developing economies, given the continent’s reliance on imports.…

Zimbabwe’s Central Bank said the increase in its policy rate to 200 per cent from 80 per cent will take effect from July 1 after annual inflation hit almost 192 per cent this month.

The benchmark interest rate was last raised to 80 per cent in April from a previous 60 per cent.

“The committee noted that the increase in inflation was undermining consumer demand and confidence and that, if not controlled, it would reverse the significant economic gains achieved over the past two years,” central bank governor Dr. John Mangudya said.

The latest figures from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTATS) showed Saturday that the country’s annual inflation rate reached 191 per cent in June. A new blow to the purchasing power of Zimbabweans, stoking fears of a return to the 2008 hyperinflation period where savings were wiped out.…