Japanese car maker Toyota announced last week it will set up an assembly line in Angola. The project is expected to cost about $200 million. According to the company’s vice president, Hideki Yanase, most of the budget will be used to purchase land, build the assembly line as well as office buildings. The infrastructure will make it possible to assemble cars, but also to manufacture spare...

Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a pan-African Multilateral Development Financial Institution based in Lagos, Nigeria, has raised $150 million through a samurai syndicated loan, which is a loan on the Japanese capital market and complies with Japanese financial regulations. The 3-year maturity facility consists of two tranches, one denominated in US dollar and the second in Japanese yen....

The United Nations found that currently about 9.2 million people are food insecure in Southern Africa and the number could reach 12 million by March 2020. Most affected countries in the region are Zimbabwe where 2.3 million could be threatened, Zambia (1.7 million), Mozambique (1.6 million), Angola (1.1 million) and Malawi (1.1 million). According to a statement by the organization, parts of...

The International Finance Corporation is considering disbursing $15.5 million for the fundraising operation currently being conducted by British Alta Semper Capital, as part of its first-ever fund targeting sub-Saharan Africa. IFC will issue a final decision on September 30 after a Board meeting.The fundraising campaign aims at a $250 million closing. The British company recently...

The Egyptian firm NowPay, which operates in the financial services sector, sold a minority stake in its capital to two American venture capital companies, Endure Capital and 500 Startups, for $600,000. The company co-founded by Mostafa Ashour (pictured), Cherif Radi and Ahmed Sabry will use this investment to strengthen its team and improve its services. Operational since 2018, NowPay has...

US trader Cargill announces it plans an investment of $120.5million in the agribusiness sector in Côte d’Ivoire. Specifically, the company wants to finance the expansion of its cocoa grinding plant Micao. Works will be carried out in two phases, the first phase will be completed in April 2020 and the second in April 2021. After it is done, the plant’s annual capacity will increase from...

Exchange between Africa and Russia last year reached a total of $20 billion, we learnt. While the black continent imported $17.4 billion worth of goods, it sold only $3 billion to Russia, making a $14.5 billion for Vladimir Putin’s country.By comparison, over the same year, for a trade volume of about $200 billion between Africa and China, the latter achieved a trade...

The government of Djibouti plans to update its law on cybersecurity to better match its vision of making Information and Communication Technologies -ICT- a mainstay of the country’s economic growth.Under this strategy, the government wants to get a number of instruments to strengthen the protection of IT systems and people’s personal data. A roadmap of the process was established on August 29...

The United Nations has extended by one year its sanction period against armed groups that are undermining the implementation of the peace deal signed between the Malian government and the Coordination des mouvements de l'Azawad in 2015. This was announced last week by Anne Gueguen (picture), France's Deputy Ambassador to the international organization. The measure comes after the UN added last...

The Africa portfolio of Dutch development bank FMO increased by €80.3 million during the first half this year, we learnt. The figure was €2.84 billion at the end of June 2019 against €2.75 billion at the end of Dec 2018. According to data, the financial sector captured the lion’s share of the investments over the period. Indeed the Dutch bank is a shareholder of the...