Features

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Donald Trump’s biggest foray into African affairs has not turned out well. The U.S. president’s bid to resolve a long-running dispute over a Nile dam has failed to make a breakthrough, joining his unsuccessful efforts in crises from North Korea to Kosovo. In the case of the Nile, he’s largely fallen afoul of the same intractable regional politics that have bedeviled African leaders for years in their own fruitless…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) — Kenya announced a resumption in international flights from Aug. 1 and lifted a ban on travel into its two biggest cities, saying the East African nation’s counties have reached a “reasonable level of preparedness” to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Travel into and out of the capital, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Mandera will resume from 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a televised speech. Domestic air travel will…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Nigeria’s presidency summoned the head of the nation’s anti-corruption body to discuss the sale of seized assets. Economic and Financial Crimes Commission acting Chairman Ibrahim Magu attended the meeting after receiving an invitation from a presidential panel while en route to another meeting, the agency said Monday in an emailed statement. It denied a report by the online newspaper The Cable that Magu had been arrested. “The EFCC’s boss…

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Isabel dos Santos, who is accused of causing billions of dollars in losses to the Angolan government during her father’s 38-year rule, said she is available to cooperate with authorities to clear her name and find out the truth. “What I want to resolve as quickly as possible are the attacks on my reputation and my good name,” Dos Santos said in an emailed statement on Monday. “I’m available,…

KINSHASA (Capital Markets in Africa) — A year ago in June, a group of bankers marched into a U.S. Treasury office in Washington on perhaps the most important mission of their careers: to save a country from financial collapse. Among them was Willy Mulamba, Citigroup Inc.’s top executive in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a resource-rich but devastatingly poor nation in central Africa. Mulamba, a 51-year-old Congolese banker who had returned home after years abroad,…

ANGOLA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Prosecutors are demanding a jail term of at least seven years for Jose Filomeno dos Santos, the son of Angola’s former president, who is accused of taking part in an illegal $500 million transfer before his father stepped down in 2017, state-owned news agency Angop said. Jose Filomeno, also known as Zenu, is the most high-profile figure linked to the previous regime to stand trial for corruption. The 42-year-old…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) — Zimbabwe’s security force leaders sidelined the nation’s economic chiefs and forced the government to close the stock exchange and halt most mobile-money transactions, people familiar with the situation said. The June 26 order that sought to stabilize the nation’s currency came after pressure from the Joint Operations Command and was made without notifying the central bank, which regulates the mobile-money industry through which almost all of Zimbabwe’s commerce takes…