Browsing: Nigeria

Anastacia Mukami sells fruits and vegetables at the Kiambu town market, a few kilometers north of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Within a month, the price of cloves of garlic has almost doubled, currently selling at 35 shillings up from 15 shillings. This, she says has led to a reduction in the number of cloves she sells in a day as the supply from China becomes more scarce.

Just like the rest of the world, Kenya is reliant on garlic shipped from China, and with the Asian giant facing near lockdown, the supply to traders like Mukami is dwindling and the economic effects of goods from China is starting to be felt across the African continent. The Directorate of Horticulture says that Kenya imports over 50 percent of garlic from China, and some more from Tanzania.

It is not just garlic sellers that are facing a bleak and uncertain future. The eastern …

Nigeria has just become the leading nation with the largest economy in Africa, after South Africa recent economic slump, when its economy contracted and sliding into a second recession in two years.

South Africa and Nigeria make up almost half of sub-Saharan Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

While South Africa statistics office highlighted bad news for the nation, suffering from power crisis, Nigeria statistician showed a rather positive performance of the economy, which grew at about 2.55 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2019.

This growth was the highest quarterly performance since the 2016 recession. It is argued that Nigeria’s economic growth was anchored on its oil exports with production levels remaining stable throughout 2019.

The South African economy shrank by 1.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2019, this followed a contraction of 0.8 per cent, which points to the fact that—the second-largest economy in Africa floated …

When Nigeria announced its first positive coronavirus infection African countries are now on guard as this has been a wake-up call for nations to strength their surveillance as well as disease containment.

The first case of the coronavirus was confirmed on February 25, via an Italian carrier who works in Nigeria and flew into the nation’s commercial city, Lagos.

According to information from BBC, Nigerian authorities commented that the “patient zero” is who is being treated in a hospital within the city, is stable and with no serious symptoms.

On the larger scale, Egypt and Algeria have also confirmed cases of the virus, while Kenya—whose authorities were debating on flights cancellation to China have given a court order to suspend flights from China, on February 28.

On a global scale, more than 2,800 people have died and more than 83,000 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in more than 50 …

Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, has seen its inflation quickened to nearly two years high in January as food shortages caused by border closures continued to drive up the price of staples, the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics revealed.

According to information from Bloomberg, the statistician report revealed that: consumer price rose to 12.1 per cent from a year earlier, compared with 12 per cent in December, which marks the fifth month of increases.

However, there were several crucial aspects in relation to the scenario, as revealed by Bloomberg.

It was highlighted that the nation’s monetary policy committee’s ability to raise interest rates to contain inflation is hampered by slow economic growth.

In January a Nigerian economist and Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Godwin Emefiele raised the number of money banks to need to deposit at zero interest with the central bank to clear up …

The visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to three African countries of Senegal, Angola, and Ethiopia is significant for the Trump administration not only as of the first trip the senior official has made to the continent, but a first for a senior official since the launch of the new strategy for Africa. The last time a senior official to visit sub-Sahara Africa was Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson who lost his job while on a trip to Kenya.

Trump’s Africa Strategy was aimed at promoting prosperity, security, and stability in relations, and the business-friendly Prosper Africa which aims to substantially increase two-way trade and investment between the United States and Africa.

The leading issue will mainly be on security and counter-terrorism efforts mainly in the Sahel as well as the horn of Africa. Though Somalia has remained a point of discussion in terms of security, there is a …

Nigerian fintech start-up, Aella has raised a $10m debt financing round, from HQ Financial Group (HQF), Singapore-based private company specializing in new material science, semiconductor and blockchain financial investments.

This debt financing round is Aella’s second raise and will bolster the company’s commitment to serve the underbanked population in West Africa and other emerging markets. The FinTech is focused on improving financial inclusion for West Africa’s low-income segment.

Aella was founded in late 2015 by Akin Jones, CEO and Akanbi Wale, CTO in Lagos, Nigeria and has remained committed to building trustworthy credit for emerging markets with an initial focus on Nigeria and the Philippines, where the company is licensed to operate. Aella has made a visible impact on the lives of more than 300k borrowers across its Employer Backed and Direct to Consumer Verticals, who now have access to simple financial products.

For millions of poor and low-income households, …

In mid-January, US based financial whistleblower and research organization Hindenburg Research released a report titled’ The Phantom of the turn-around’ in which it questioned the operations of Opera, the Chinese owned browser whose popularity in Africa has remained high. What has followed is a series of class-action lawsuits by a dozen law firms in US and UK against the browser.

The research firm accused Opera of “developing predatory short-term loans in Africa and India, deploying deceptive ‘bait and switch’ tactics to lure in borrowers and charging egregious interest rates ranging from 365-876%.” This, the company says is going against Google policies of charging fair rates on short term loans.

According to financial firm Hindenburg Research, Opera has launched at least four payment apps under various developer accounts. There’s Okash and OPesa in Kenya, CashBean in India, and OPay in Nigeria.

It noted that Opera has scaled its “Fintech” segment from …

Cellulant Corporation – the pan-African technology company based in Kenya is known for developing revolutionary technologies to empower African commerce. Such a technology include blockchain-based Agrikore and Tingg, which are now being used across Africa as well as being imported to countries like Afghanistan.

These technologies have empowered Africa’s agriculture sector in the assurance to leverage on technology to help block inefficiency and wastages in Africa’s agricultural value chain courtesy of its improved payment and marketplace solutions, Tingg and Agrikore.

The Agriculture market in Africa, despite its $330billion size in 2015 and projected to grow to $1Trillion by 2030 is not organized. Agrikore provides this on its block-chain core. It makes this wealth addressable & accessible to all through a comprehensive system consisting of the technology, business processes, and operating models that deliver a systematic organization of the actors in Agriculture in a manner that is extremely de-risked and investable …

MTN, the South African telecoms group has said it will invest $1.6 billion in Nigeria days after Nigeria backed down on a $2 billion tax demand.

In a meeting with the president of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari, a team of four top executives from MTN group and MTN Nigeria said they will invest the money over the next three years.

“MTN announced a capital investment programme of $1.6 billion over the next three years to strengthen and expand its network and operations in the country,” said the company in a statement after the meeting.
Nigeria’s President said, “that the Federal Government of Nigeria is committed to providing an enabling environment for businesses to succeed”.

Also Read: MTN Cameroon gets mobile money accreditation

MTN hopes that the peace pact will mark the end of four years of disputes with Nigeria, which at one time was threatening a fine of $5.2 billion, cut …