The Sahel Alliance will hold its second general assembly in N'Djamena, Chad on Monday, 15 February 2021. The meeting will take place on the side-lines of a summit for the G5 Sahel countries— Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad—as well as France. The African Development Bank played an active role in the formation in July 2017 of the Alliance, an international cooperation platform to...

The Madagascar government reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the disbursement of $320 million. In an official statement, the Fund said the new deal is an Extended Credit Facility set up to assist the country in the implementation of its economic reforms. The goal is to support the post-Covid recovery, improve and sustain inclusive growth and...

Initially, the COVID-19 pandemic did not threaten food availability in sub- Saharan Africa due to adequate reserves for most staple crops in 2019. Access to food was instead the focus as borders closed and global supply chains weakened. Almost a year after the pandemic outbreak, it is now evident that agriculture production and its allied industries are struggling. Prices increased for most...

Rwanda plans to increase its 2020/2021 budget by 6.7%. This was announced on Thursday, February 11, by Uzziel Ndagijimana (pictured), during a virtual session with the Parliament. The move will see the budget increase from 3,245 billion Rwandan francs ($3.2 billion) to 3,464 billion Rwandan francs ($3.4 billion). The objective is to strengthen public spending in different sectors of the economy,...

Mobile operator Airtel Tanzania announced the successful upgrade of its 4G telecom network across the country. This investment, which allowed the company to initiate the "Supa 4G" project, now enables it to offer the population much better quality services on the 700 MHz and 2100 MHz frequency bands. Consumers now have access to Internet speeds above 40 Mbps. On Tuesday, February 9 in Dar es...

Zimbabwean Information Minister, Monica Mutsvangwa announced this week the country will take delivery of 800,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine by March 2021. She revealed the government has purchased 600,000 doses of the vaccine and the remaining 200,000 doses offered by China. “The donation of 200,000 doses and an initial batch of 600,000 doses which the Zimbabwe government has purchased are...

Last week, the Ivorian government launched a project to improve clean water supply in Abidjan, the country’s most populous city. Laurent Tchagba, the Minister of Hydraulics, said the $200 million initiative (CFA108 billion) will improve both the quantity and quality of drinking water for nearly 1.5 million inhabitants of the city by 2038. Under this plan, the Ivorian authorities want to...

The satellite internet network provided by the constellation of satellites deployed in space starting in 2019, by the American company SpaceX, will be available in South Africa in 2022. A message is delivered, to this effect, to consumers who want to take part in the public beta version of the network initiated in October 2020. South Africans can already pre-order Starlink's Internet service...

Janus Capital, the investment arm of the Janus Continental Group, is investing $13 million in the renewable energy storage company, Highview Enterprise Limited, in return for a significant undisclosed stake in its capital. This transaction was carried out in collaboration with the Japanese industrial group Sumitomo Heavy Industries and the firm TSK. “The investment will tackle the...

Nigeria will need to create 5 million new jobs yearly over the next ten years to prevent an increase in the unemployment rate, IMF experts said in a recent report. According to the document, this figure includes the growing number of young people entering the labor market each year. With more than 201 million people registered in 2019, Nigeria is the 7th most populous country in the world and...