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The RoRo, along with the ramp and terminal were completed as of March 2021 after three years of dedicated construction works. With its completion, vehicles can now be driven, not carried, off the ship.

With this development, large vessels that took up to four days to offload and turn around now take only 17 hours to offload, that is say, an average of three vehicles per minute offloaded per minute.

The terminal is also a major game-changer because instead of driving two km in search of parking, vehicles can now be parked in the spacious berth with a handling capacity of 3,000 vehicles at a time.

The most extensive data centre operators worldwide are racing to buy and build capacity in Africa.

A data centre is an extensive network of computer servers commonly used by organizations for remote processing, storage, or distribution of large data compilations.

Modor Intelligence expects that the data centre services markets, valued at US$48.90 billion in 2020, will rise to over US$105.6 billion by 2026.

Africa is home to at least 47 foreign military outposts, with the US controlling the largest number. Djibouti is the only country in the world to host both American and Chinese outposts.

A recent survey by Afrobarometer across 34 countries indicated that 63 per cent of the population see China’s influence in Africa as positive, whilst 60 per cent made similar comments about the US. Are there benefits to be extracted from this searing rivalry?

Africa’s Agenda 2063 on the ‘Africa we want’ set by the African Union, advocates under its first aspiration, a ‘Prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development’ and ‘A Strong, United, Resilient and Influential Global Player and Partner’ under aspiration 7.

When exports receipts increase it means from the definition given that the country that pursues this strategy will find itself in the desired position where it earns more than it spends.

This in the long run will lead to the country becoming less reliant on balance of payments support from multilateral lenders and repaying its debt obligations.

For a country like Zimbabwe, it is imperative that the southern African country pursues this strategy as the increased foreign exchange receipts will provide desperately needed foreign currency and monetary stability.

This comes as the IMF has downgraded economic prospects for countries in this cluster. The downgrades have, however, been offset relatively by projections for some commodity producers and exporters that were upgraded on the back of rising commodity prices.

The economic prospects between wealthy nations and low-income countries are expected to be divergent and this divergence will remain of great concern to multilateral lenders and world leaders. In wealthy nations, for example, aggregate output for the cluster economies is expected to regain its pre-pandemic trend path in 2022 and exceed it by 0.9% in 2024 whereas the cluster of nations comprise emerging markets and developing economies (excluding China) will remain 5.5% below their pre-pandemic forecasts in 2024.

This event should it occur as forecast will set back improvements in living standards.

The company has been in existence for about 130 years and in that period amassed a substantial portfolio of businesses that comprise hospitality, food retail, agriculture, and security services. The large size of the company and dominance in the markets made it a darling of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.

At the height of its conglomerate strategy, the company owned everything from food retailers, department stores, a cotton printing company, tea estates, and a bank. Meikles was even called Kingdom Meikles Africa during its short-lived with Kingdom Financial Holdings.

The company divested its financial services interest in a demerger after an acrimonious shareholder and boardroom dispute and so began the drive to refocus its business activities around its core businesses namely retail, hospitality, security services, real estate, and agriculture. Meikles recently announced that it would be discontinuing its mining activities.

These prospective customer circumstances have provided the proverbial “ace” which Capitec has played very successfully during its 21 years of existence.

Capitec’s success is attributable largely to the leadership of one man Stassen and the support of his team. Stassen for his part is not a traditional banker, he was during his time at the helm of the bank an even more unconventional CEO.

In his own words, he is non-hierarchical, consultative, and often informal in his approach. By his own admission, he is not a natural reader but said that he learns a lot from observation… Typically the average chief executive is said to read at least 52 books a year… but then Stassen was not an average CEO.

Capitec Bank has 16 million clients, more than half of which bank digitally.

The bank has more than 800 branches spread out through South Africa. Capitec can now claim to be the bona fide largest banking company in South Africa.

Capitec Bank was founded in 2000 in a sector fiercely competed for and dominated by what was then the big four banks, Standard Bank, Nedbank, FNB and ABSA.

It further explains that the RCF disbursement will continue to help address Tanzania’s urgent balance of payment needs arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The money will also serve to provide Tanzania with concessional resources needed to take measures to mitigate the severe socio-economic impact of the pandemic.

Tanzania’s economy is heavily dependent on the tourism industry and as yet, the IMF cautions that travel services receipts and travel arrivals continue to remain below pre-pandemic levels.

The Spain energy crisis comes after Algeria cut off natural gas supply through the Gaz-Maghreb-Europe (GME) pipeline.

Algeria President Abdelmadjid Tebboune authorized Sonatrach (state energy firm) to stop gas exports to Spain through the pipeline that transverses through Morocco to Spain, due to tensions with Rabat, accusations that Morocco denied.

The 1400 km GME pipeline has been in operation for over 55 years, delivering billion cubic metres per year to Portugal and Spain.