Features

BAMAKO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Mali severed defense ties with France as a multinational force that’s helped the government fight an Islamist insurgency for the past decade withdraws from the West African nation.The decision to end military collaboration marks the latest deterioration in relations between the countries after a series of disputes in recent months. Mali has criticized France’s decision to move its counter-insurgency forces to neighboring Niger, while France has condemned the presence of Russian…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) –  Every time we ask Siri a question on our iPhones, we’re using artificial intelligence, of course, but in what other ways will it infiltrate our lives? AI already goes beyond just Siri or Alexa. Every time you get directions from Google Maps, it’s AI that’s working out the shortest path from A to B. When you get a film recommendation on Netflix, it’s AI that knows about people’s preferences…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree imposing a new payments system for gas supplies has placed the European Union and Russia at loggerheads, with Moscow demanding that EU companies open accounts in rubles. The issue, sparked by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Western response to it, escalated on April 27 after Russia cut off gas sales to Poland and Bulgaria, which refused to pay in rubles. At stake is…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – As he negotiated a $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter Inc., Elon Musk told bankers that he would be focused on the social-media company’s bottom line, and floated the idea of cutting both costs and jobs, according to people familiar with the matter. On calls with teams of bankers before the deal was announced, Musk fielded questions on how he would generate financial returns at Twitter. While nothing is…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Trafigura Group and Zimbabwe’s government have discussed a deal that would give the commodities trader control over output from some of the nation’s biggest mines as repayment for debts, documents seen by Bloomberg show. Under the agreement, Trafigura will be paid $225.6 million by nickel- and gold-mining subsidiaries of state-run Kuvimba Mining House Ltd. for fuel bills Zimbabwe owes Trafigura on contracts dating back to 2016, the documents show….

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – About 80% of freshly minted cryptocurrencies are underwater and their average returns are close to zero relative to Bitcoin within a year, according to a Jump Crypto analysis. While there are a few high-profile outliers, the majority of new coins were underperforming within the first month, the public-facing crypto brand for Jump Trading Group found, after analyzing 3,759 tokens — excluding assets like stablecoins — that were listed on CoinGecko and…

ALGIERS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Algeria threatened to cut natural gas flows to Spain if it re-exports Algerian supplies to other countries, amid rising diplomatic tensions over Morocco.The warning came after Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said Madrid would start sending gas, albeit of non-Algerian origin, to Morocco via the Maghreb-European pipeline.Spain has discussed the use of the pipeline, known as MEG, with Algeria in recent months and its decision was communicated on Wednesday, according to…