Features

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ghanaians voted Monday in a presidential election that’s expected to be tight, as the two front-runners face off for the third time. President Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party is seeking another four years at the helm of Africa’s top gold producer. His predecessor, John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress, aims to unseat him with a promise of mass infrastructure spending. The winner of Monday’s contest will…

New York(Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said Tuesday there will be a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” a remark which may have been in jest but throws fuel on the president’s unsubstantiated claims that the Nov. 3 election was fraudulent. “The world should have every confidence” that the Jan. 20 transitions will be successful, Pompeo said from the State Department podium in response to a reporter’s question about Joe Biden’s electoral…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — President-elect Joe Biden shrugged off Donald Trump’s effort to challenge the election results, forging ahead with transition planning even as the president pursues a multi-state legal fight backed by Republican allies and the Justice Department. Trump’s campaign on Tuesday said it would file a federal lawsuit in Michigan that seeks to stop the state’s top election official from certifying Biden’s win. The campaign filed a similar suit in Pennsylvania…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — A European Union development fund has financed biometric identity systems in Senegal and Ivory Coast, in some cases aimed at identifying undocumented citizens living in Europe and to organize their return, according to a report by Privacy International. The system in Ivory Coast in part aims to “facilitate the identification of people genuinely of Ivorian nationality and to organize their return more easily,” one document says. In a letter to…

ADDIS ABABA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia’s federal government and the northern state of Tigray have escalated to the verge of all-out conflict. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Nov. 4 ordered the military to respond to an alleged raid on an army camp in the restive region and placed it under a six-month state of emergency. Tigrayan leaders responded by banning flights and warned they’ll respond to any acts of…

ADDIS ABABA(Capital Markets in Africa) — Ethiopia’s leader replaced key security officials as fighting in the country’s northern Tigray region entered the sixth day. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appointed General Birhanu Jula, the No. 2 military official, as chief of staff, replacing General Adem Mohammed. He also named Veteran Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew as a national security adviser, and his job was handed to Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen. “It is a leadership shuffle aimed…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — The emerging-market bargain-buyers are in celebration mode. And the party’s not over yet. The prospect of a Joe Biden presidency checked by a divided Congress has gotten everyone from Eaton Vance Corp. to Medley Global Advisors predicting a fresh boost for risk assets, just a week after the stocks, currencies and bonds of developing nations hit the buffers as the U.S. election approached. BlackRock Inc. says developing-nation assets, which look more…