Browsing: South Africa

The working-age population of sub-Saharan Africa is set to increase more than twofold by 2050 to become the largest in the world, offering unprecedented opportunity for economic growth, according to S&P Global Ratings.

This burgeoning youth population is both an opportunity and a challenge for the continent. On the positive side, the population provides an opportunity for the continent to address Africa’s sustainable development challenges. While the continent’s natural resources are vital, the creativity and innovation of its youthful population can play a key role in the continent’s economic transformation.

In a report published on Wednesday, the ratings agency estimated that growth in the working-age population would add up to three percentage points to the average annual GDP growth for the next 10 years across key economies in the subcontinent.

According to the Senior economist of the S&P Global ratings,countries in sub-Saharan Africa are now experiencing the “most significant demographic …

With these kinds of benefits, the AGOA has to be improved to align with the demands of the AfCFTA. In February 2020, the US and Kenya signed the first of a kind trade agreement between the United States and a Sub-Saharan African (SSA) country.

The FTA represents the most significant innovation in US-African trade relations since the enactment of AGOA and if successfully concluded, the FTA would undoubtedly signify an important shift in US trade policy in the region.

With the reality that competition for business in Africa is heating up, the FTA is a crucial issue which the Biden administration and Congress must grapple with especially now that the AfCFTA has been operationalised. On the other hand, Africa must be wary of any external forces that would disintegrate the AfCFTA in the guise of doing business with individual countries.…

Imperial (www.Imperiallogistics.com)is pleased to advise that in F2019 and F2020, it created value of R146 billion ($10.23 billion) and R98 billion ($6.86 billion) for its stakeholders and communities in Nigeria and South Africa respectively, as confirmed by a recent Socioeconomic Impact Assessment study undertaken by Accenture.

“Imperial plays a key role in connecting Africa and the world and improving people’s lives with access to quality products and services. As a purpose-driven organisation with Environmental, Social and Governance imperatives embedded in our business strategy all our businesses remain committed to not just creating but sustaining value for all our stakeholders across our 25 countries of operation”, says Mohammed Akoojee, Imperial’s Group CEO. “We take a holistic approach regarding value creation wherein value is created not only for Imperial but also for other stakeholders in the value chain, including the development of our communities and countries of operation.”

In assessing …

Practically speaking, it is not difficult to invest offshore. It is not illegal. It is perfectly legal. 

There are no guarantees that investments made offshore will perform better than those available locally. FNB the South African bank says that diversifying share portfolio geographically has similar benefits to diversifying across asset classes.…

Whatever the reason, the outcome was that most notable BEE transactions went to Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals and Ubuntu Botho Investments, Tokyo Sexwale’s Mvelaphanda Holdings and the current President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Shanduka Investments which is now part of the Pembani Group.

Legislated empowerment whose focus was primarily on ownership levels produced heavily skewed results towards benefitting political stalwarts and not the broader masses that were previously disadvantaged during apartheid. …

With over billion mobile money accounts Africa continues to lead the way in transaction value and volume thanks to M-pesa a Kenyan based mobile money service, that is largely used in East Africa. Other regions all-round the Continent are also registering massive growth.

In 2019, West Africa reported the most live mobile money services in any region, with 56 million active accounts. In Ivory Coast, one of Francophone Africa’s largest mobile money markets, 75% of the population own a mobile money account, compared to 20% who own bank accounts. The difference is staggering and clearly shows the region’s huge appetite for the service.

While telecom operators have largely dominated mobile money services across most of sub-Saharan Africa, a few startups are trying to change the mobile money experience for customers. Ivory Coast-based fintech startup Julaya a digital account for African small and Medium businesses is one such company, that has …

Lesotho has finalized a new tax treaty with Mauritius, alleviating fears in the southern African nation that multinational corporations were dodging taxes through shell companies.

The new agreement, which sets out the taxation rules for companies that run Lesotho businesses from Mauritius, came into effect replacing a 1997 treaty that, in recent years, the Lesotho authorities complained was unfair.

“The process for renegotiating the treaty was initiated by Lesotho in recognition that the old treaty was compromising Lesotho’s interests and because some of the key elements of a modern tax treaty were missing,” according to a brief provided to ICIJ by the Lesotho Revenue Authority.

Lesotho, a tiny, mountainous kingdom of 2 million people surrounded by South Africa, is rich in diamonds but has a stubbornly high rate of poverty. Almost half the population live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

In recent years, Lesotho’s economic performance …

As of July 1, price for petroleum products in Tanzania increased drastically owing to the amendments outlined in the country’s new Finance Act as passed by parliament.  A huge chunk of the money you pay at the pump goes to the government in taxes; in fact the government takes anything between 30 and 40 percent in form of taxes, levies and regulatory fees.

Nonetheless, Tanzania’s Energy and Water Utilities Regulatory Authority (Ewura) still attributed the price hike to global trends, in part admitting to the tax effect and in part deflecting it to global trends.…

South Africa remains one of the most important trading partners for Zimbabwe; with Zimbabwe importing 40% of its total imports and exporting 75% of its total exports to South Africa.

Since 2007, South Africa has always maintained a trade surplus with Zimbabwe with the surplus widening over the review period mainly attributed to the economic instability experienced in Zimbabwe and the volatility of the South African Rand to the US dollar.

But with the violent events that unfolded in South Africa this past week continually present renewed purpose for some serious soul searching by Zimbabwe’s economic decision makers on how to model the economy out of the dependency on its neighbor to the south for raw materials and other essentials, according to the economic experts.

South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng provinces the two strategic economic areas broke into mayhem last week as looters ransacked major retail shops, banks and …

That year, in 2015, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania settled for a three-year plan to phase out the importation of used clothes, a major exporter been the United States. To realise the intended ban, taxes were increased on second-hand clothes were increased effectively deterring their importation. The plan was to completely ban the import of second-hand clothes as of 2019.

This ambitious vision was never realized as the Trump administration issued an ultimatum for EAC to rescind the ban on second-hand clothes by 23 February 2018 or, as the DW writer Isaac Mugabi puts it ‘face the consequences.’…