Features

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Martkets in Africa) – South Africa is ramping up its vaccination drive as the omicron variant threatens to derail a stuttering recovery from the coronavirus crisis, while companies are taking a harder line against those who don’t get shots.  The daily number of Covid-19 infections in the country has jumped five-fold over of the past week following the onset of the new strain, with the rolling seven-day average of cases exceeding 10,000. Despite…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – People infected by omicron in South Africa are showing very different symptoms to those suffering from the delta strain, said the doctor who alerted government scientists to the possibility of a new variant.  Patients who contracted it complain of fatigue, head and body aches and occasional sore throats and coughs, said Angelique Coetzee, who is also chairwoman of the South African Medical Association. Delta infections, by comparison, caused elevated pulse…

KINSHASA (Capital MArkets in Africa) – The Chinese businessman had walked out of a bank in Kinshasa with 13,624 hundred-dollar bills, 10,001 fifties and 43,000 smaller U.S. notes, despite explicit instructions to prevent it from happening. “The account has finally been emptied,” Yvon Douhore, head of an in-house audit team in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, wrote in an email that day, July 5, 2018, after noticing the withdrawal. “I’m at a loss…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – President Joe Biden will give a speech on the economy and combating inflation on Tuesday as markets await his decision on the next Federal Reserve chair and possible moves to bring down U.S. energy prices. For the U.S. central bank, Biden is choosing between Chair Jerome Powell and Fed Governor Lael Brainard, who is viewed as more liberal on climate change and bank regulation. The White House has said Biden will…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Sudan’s military and civilian leaders reached a deal Sunday to reinstate Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who was ousted in a coup last month that reignited mass protests and political uncertainty more than two years after a popular uprising forced out longtime autocrat Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Hamdok, who had spent the past month under house arrest, praised the agreement as a way to restore Sudan’s fragile democratic transition, but the…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Prosus NV said analysts have valued its global portfolio of e-commerce assets at about $50 billion, excluding the stake in Hong Kong’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. — well above the market rate. The investment firm, which has spent heavily on internet payments, food delivery, education and more around the world, is looking to boost that figure to $100 billion over the next three years, Chief Executive Officer Bob van Dijktold reporters…