Finance

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Equatorial Guinea signed agreements to develop natural gas from offshore blocks operated by Noble Energy Inc., which will feed the Punta Europa liquefied natural gas plant in an effort to boost exports of the fuel. The Alen Unit joint venture project, located in Blocks O and I, will install a 70-kilometer (44-mile) pipeline from its platform to the LNG plant, operated by Marathon Oil Corp. The gas will then be processed…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Jumia Technologies AG said Mastercard Inc. has agreed to invest 50 million euros ($56 million) in a private placement ahead of the Africa-focused online retailer’s planned initial public offering in New York. The U.S. credit-card giant joins shareholders such as French drinks maker Pernod Ricard SA, which bought a 5.1 percent stake for 75 million euros in December, and largest investors MTN Group Ltd. and Rocket Internet SE. The Pernod deal valued Jumia at…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Bumper coffee harvests were supposed to fuel Burundi’s recovery from three years of political upheaval. Tell that to Jean Ntungiyabandi, one local farmer who’s just called it quits. The tiny East African nation, which counts Starbucks Corp. among its customers and gets at least 80 percent of its foreign exchange from coffee, wants to double output by 2023. But delays in local payments are squeezing its 60,000 small-scale producers, complicating…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Under the rule of the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha more than 20 years ago, a handful of high-ranking government officials looted billions of dollars from the country’s coffers. Now the Nigerian government is demanding some of its money back — from JPMorgan Chase. In a British court, lawyers for the country are suing a subsidiary of the largest United States bank, charging that it enabled corrupt former officials to…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in  Africa) – Nigeria plans to spend $20 billion on infrastructure over the next 10 years and will introduce an infrastructure bond in 2019 as Africa’s biggest oil producer seeks to address challenges in revenue generation. “Our target is that we’d like to see infrastructure spending increase to the $10- to $20-billion range over the next 5 to 10 years because we think that’s the level of our need,” Okechukwu Enelamah, the minister…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo pledged that the government will maintain fiscal discipline following the completion of a four-year bailout program with the International Monetary Fund. West Africa’s second-biggest economy last week passed the final review of an almost $1 billion extended credit-facility program that it entered into in April 2015 when a currency crisis caused inflation to soar and debt to become unaffordable. During the course of the program, the fiscal deficit has…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Argentina is eyeing its first major new mining project in two decades, nudged forward by President Mauricio Macri’s market-oriented policies. But there’s no guarantee he’ll be around to take credit. Argentina’s economy is tanking with the central bank hiking interest rates to ease inflation and save the peso, the worst-performing currency in emerging markets. That could put Macri on shaky ground as he heads toward a presidential election in October where he could…