The Editorial Team |

South Africa expects to start granting shale licences later this year

LONDON (Reuters) – South Africa’s mining minister said on Monday he expected to start issuing shale exploration licences later this year.”At the moment we are going through the consultation process (with stakeholders such as communities),” Ngoako Ramatlhodi told Reuters on the sidelines of the Chatham House extractive Industries in Africa conference.”We should finish the consultations by the middle of this year and that will enable us to issue licences.”Earlier in the day, Royal Dutch Shell…

South Africa’s rand softens ahead of current account data

Posted on by The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s rand was slightly softer against the dollar early on Tuesday with scope to weaken further should a central bank report show a wider-than-expected current account deficit.The local unit tends to be hit harder than its peers when investors bail out of emerging markets which offer higher yields but are perceived to carry greater risk.At 0632 GMT the rand traded at 12.4180 to the dollar, down 0.19 percent from where it…

Tanzania budget spending seen flat in 2015/16

Posted on by The Editorial Team

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Tanzania’s government budget is expected to stay unchanged in 2015/16 from projections of the current fiscal year due to a sharp fall in financial aid flows to east Africa’s second-biggest economy, according to a budget guidelines document.Donors have withheld more than three-quarters of $558 million of promised budget support to one of Africa’s biggest per capita aid recipients in the current fiscal year 2014/15 following allegations of high-level graft in the country’s…

Italians increasing investment in Ethiopia

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Ethiopia has seen an increased Italian appetite for investment in infrastructure, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, energy and tourism, according to an EthiopianHerald report in AllAfrica. Italian businesses have been engaged in about 200 investment projects in Ethiopia since 1994 with investments worth 6.2 billion birr ($304.15 million US). Ethiopia wants the relationship to get stronger still, said Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Dewano Kedir at the Ethio-Italy-Greek Trilateral Investment and Business Networking Forum, held recently in Addis…

Kenya’s Standard Group 2014 profit up 8 pct on advertising boos

Posted on by The Editorial Team

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenyan media company Standard Group posted an 8.4 percent rise in pretax profit for 2014 due to growth in print, TV and radio advertising.The publisher of Kenya’s oldest and second-largest daily paper, the Standard, and an operator of a radio and TV station, said profit before tax climbed to 326 million shillings ($3.6 million), while revenue nudged marginally lower.Standard Group said it was optimistic about 2015 and wants to tap into Kenya’s…

Frontier Markets Debt May Dodge Fed Bullet

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Sovereign debt issuance from frontier markets this year may not reach last year’s record levels but new bonds are still likely to be warmly received by investors, says Steffen Reichold, a portfolio manager at Stone Harbor Investment Partners, which manages around $45 billion in frontier- and emerging-markets debt. With the U.S. Federal Reserve likely to begin raising interest rates later this year, countries are feeling pressure to issue debt while yields are still relatively low, Reichold says….

Africa Executives Welcome Thiam Move, Say There Should Be More

Posted on by The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG – African business leaders cheered Tidjane Thiam’s appointment as chief executive of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse Group AG this week. So far, though, Mr. Thiam’s ascent to the top of a western multinational looks like the exception to the rule that executives from the continent still don’t reach the top of the global corporate elite. “He’s a great leader who happens to have roots in Africa. At some point we need to get to…

« 1 … 1,056 1,057 1,058 1,059 1,060 … 1,066 »