Every week, we review the best Africa-related business and finance news across the web and deliver to you the top 10 pieces of the week!
Week of February 24th
SA in Danger of Losing Status as Gateway to Africa, Says Business Experts
Nigeria and Egypt pose the greatest risk to South Africa’s relative continental competitiveness. Investors increasingly invest directly in target markets in Africa. By 2050, Egypt is expected to be twice and Nigeria three times the size of the South African economy.Read More »
Source: Business Day (South Africa)
Shell Says Appetite for Nigeria Exploration Waning
Royal Dutch Shell says attacks on pipelines, inadequate funding from the state oil firm and regulatory uncertainty have dampened appetite for exploration of Nigeria’s vast oil and gas reserves. Nigeria produces 2.5 million barrels, but could produce up to 4 million barrels per day.Read More »
Source: Reuters
Stelios to Invest $500 Million in Low-Cost West Africa Airline
The founder of EasyJet Plc, Stelios, plans to invest $500 million in a low-cost African airline with Ghana’s capital as its regional hub. Ghana’s economy, the second-biggest in West Africa, has attracted interest from airlines since the 2007 discovery of oil for export.Read More »
Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
Kenya's Startup Boom
Local programmers in Kenya are developing homegrown business models to deploy cell phones to improve healthcare and save lives. A tech-savvy generation has emerged and is addressing Kenya’s public-health problems in ways that donors, NGOs, and multinational companies alone cannot. Read More »Source: Technology Review (USA)
GlaxoSmithKline Nigeria to Boost Sales With New Consumer Items
GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Nigeria Plc, a unit of the U.K.’s biggest drugmaker, is targeting a 25 percent rise in revenue in 2012 as it expands sales of its branded retail items in Africa’s most populous nation. The move is part of the company’s push into consumer goods in emerging markets. Read More »Source: Bloomberg
UBS Wants Africa Bourses Opened Up for Foreign Inflows
UBS, the Swiss global financial services giant, states that while investors may be able to get higher returns in Africa than in many western markets, funds have not been able to freely flow into African markets, due in part to the small size of stock markets outside of South Africa. Read More »Source: Business Daily (Kenya)
KFC’s African Adventure
KFC’s entry into Africa in 1971 was more a coincidence than part of a strategic plan. The chain has since launched in Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. In 2012 it plans to open outlets in Angola, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar. Read More »Source: How We Made it in Africa (South Africa)
Nigeria’s Fiscal, Exchange Rate Outlook Under Threat, Despite Rising Reserves
Nigeria's foreign exchange reserves, derived mainly from the country’s crude oil sales, reached a six-month high of $35.03 billion on February 13, increasing by $1.47 billion in the last two months alone. Despite this, analysts remain cautious about risks to the country's fiscal and exchange rate outlook as long as the right fiscal policies are lacking. Read More »Source: BusinessDay (Nigeria)
Airtel Nigeria and FirstBank Sign MoU on Mobile Money Service
The two leading companies in banking and telecom sectors of the economy, FirstBank of Nigeria and Airtel Networks, have agreed to cooperate to provide seamless mobile money services to millions of Nigerians, a development that promises to transform the landscape of e-banking services in the country. Read More »Source: Nigerian Bulletin
Business in Rwanda: Africa’s Singapore?
Rwanda seeks prosperity by becoming business friendly. The country has one big advantage over many other African countries: the rule of law. No African country has done more to curb corruption. The country is free of red tape and is placed third among African countries in the World Bank’s index of the ease of doing business. Read More »Source: The Economist
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