Following a satisfactory third review under the Extended Credit Facility arrangement signed with Burkina Faso in March 2018, the International Monetary Fund approved the disbursement of $24.9 million for the country. In the related document, the Fund says Burkina’s economic growth remains resilient despite the rising security crisis. Growth was 6.4% in the first half of the year and is...

Ethiopia is starting the year 2020 on a good note. The businessman Mohammed al-Amoudi announced he is investing 4 billion birr (about $126 million) to build a huge and modern edible oil processing plant in the country. The first stone was laid on Dec 28 in Addis Ababa in the presence of the City Mayor Takele Uma, local media reported. According to the official, the project aligns with his...

Construction of the Lagos-Abidjan corridor, the deal which was signed since March 2014, will start by 2022. The good news was announced by AfDB Chairman, Akinwumi Adesina, on the sidelines of the 56th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government held Saturday in Abuja. “The Lagos-Abidjan highway will become a reality [...] That’s why the African Development Bank...

US cybersecurity researcher Bob Diachenko reports that the personal data of 267 million Facebook users has been exposed on hacker forums. The users' identifiers, names and phone numbers were freely available on the platforms concerned. In response, Facebook says they are “looking into this issue, but believe this is likely information obtained before changes we made in the past few years to...

Turkey says it is getting ready to send military troops to Libya to assist the Government of National Accord (GNA) in its fight against attacks by Marshal Khalifa Haftar's forces. The announcement was made on Thursday by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured). President Erdogan indicates that by next month, a new law is expected to be passed by the parliament to authorize the...

On 11 December 2019, the African branch of Indian telecom group Bharti Airtel, Airtel Africa, unveiled its intention to list part of its Malawi subsidiary on the local stock exchange. The listing price is set at MK12.69 (0.02 USD) per share. According to the company, the offer is expected to comprise 1.65 billion shares, representing 15% of the issued share capital. A further 550 million shares,...

Proparco, the private sector arm of the French Development Agency (AFD), and Côte d'Ivoire signed three financing agreements worth €32.5 million on Saturday 21 December 2019. The first agreement signed with Société Générale Côte d'Ivoire (SGCI) is estimated at €15 million and concerns a pilot project which will enable the development of a guarantee offer for short-term Trade...

Between 2000 and 2018, Rwanda’s economy grew by an average of 8%, the Finance Minister, Uzziel Ndagijimana (pictured), announced during the 17th National Dialogue held on 19 and 20 December 2019, in Kigali. Over the period reviewed, GDP rose from 174 billion Rwandan francs (about $183.4 million) to 2876 billion Rwandan francs (about $3.03 billion) and the minimum wage increased 3.5...

The African Development Bank’s investments in West Africa are yielding remarkable results, the President of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, said in Abuja on Saturday. He was speaking at the bloc’s fifty-sixth ordinary session, attended by regional heads of state and government. Brou said the Bank had provided “invaluable technical...

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has endorsed the candidacy of African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina for a second term at the helm of the institution. The decision was announced at the end of the fifty-sixth ordinary session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS, held on Saturday in Abuja, Nigeria.“In recognition of the sterling...