Features

JOHANNESBUGR (Capital Markets in Africa) – The trip from Pretoria to Mabopane starts on a six-lane highway lined with malls and office parks, passes verdant gated communities featuring pools and gardens, and ends in the dusty township north of South Africa’s capital where the trees, shops, and sumptuous homes make way for stark, single-story cinder-block structures in dirt yards. Inside one of them—the Katekani Community Development Project, a collection of brick buildings behind a barbed-wire…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – An urgent global effort to rebalance the inequity between rich, vaccinated nations and poor nations sliding further into pandemic misery is colliding with an immovable calendar conflict: the European summer holiday. Next week World Trade Organization delegates are planning to depart Geneva for their August break and, in doing so, pause their fractious debate over a proposal to waive intellectual-property protections for Covid-19 shots until the second week of…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Early in the pandemic last year, London property developer Arnaud Touret bought a batch of 5,000 rapid Covid tests from South Korea. He set up a laboratory to analyze the results, hired a chief medical officer and applied for U.K. accreditation for his new venture. His company, Covid Home Test U.K. Ltd., is now among more than 400 businesses listed on the government’s website offering PCR tests for travelers on their…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – After South Africa’s week from hell, the trial of Jacob Zuma has been postponed until August 10, and it will be months, perhaps even years, before a judicial panel decides whether or not the former president is guilty of corruption. His successor faces far swifter judgment in the court of public opinion. President Cyril Ramaphosa is scrambling to undo the damage, physical and political, wrought by the widespread rioting in…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — As Ethiopia begins diverting 13.5 billion cubic meters of water from the Blue Nile river to its controversial new mega-dam, residents of Sudan to the south fear a repetition of last year’s devastating drought. The second stage of filling the $4.5 billion reservoir is ratcheting up tensions between Ethiopia and neighbors Sudan and Egypt, who depend on the Nile to support farming and generate power for their economies. It’s…

The online slot gaming industry has grown exponentially in the past decade. From China to the USA avid slot fans are constantly on the hunt for the right online slot machine for them. Whether they are a high roller or even a conservative player, everyone is trying to find that one machine that works best for them. In recent years, new formats of online slot games have entered the market namely: Megaclusters. This new exciting…