The Bank of Solidarity of Mali (BMS-SA) secured from the Investment and Development Bank of the ECOWAS (BIDC) a FCFA10 billion credit line last Tuesday. The financing agreement was signed by BIDC’s president, Bashir Mamman Ifo, and Babaly Ba, managing director of BMS-SA, the same day at the ministry of economy and finances. “The FCFA10 billion credit line repayable over nine years (with a...

British firm Azuri Technologies announced has received from Standard Chartered Bank a credit facility of $5 million. The money will be used for manufacturing-purpose in addition to acquiring solar home systems which the firm distributes across Africa. “As the PayGo industry matures, access to innovative debt finance mechanisms becomes an increasingly important part of being able to...

A report presented during a roundtable themed “Land tenure : a risk for investors and political stability”, last Thursday in Dakar, denounces various policies related to the management and monitoring of investors’ activities in African countries. The document which was presented by TMP Systems and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) states that these policies allow multinationals...

On Feb 8, on the sidelines of the International fair on real estate and urban development held in Algiers, the head of the national organization of real estate developers (ONPI), Maâmar Boumdal mentioned heavy land procedures which are detrimental to real estate investors. The official shared concerns over the “various constraints that real estate developers face, such as difficulty to obtain...

Recession-hit Nigeria plans to borrow at least $1 billion from the World Bank and also plans to present this month the financial institution the economic reform proposals it required, officials and diplomats told Reuters. For a year now, the West African nation has been negotiating with the bank to secure a loan to plug the budget deficit of $7 billion for 2016 and fund essential...

The Kaduna Refinery loses an average of N2.2 billion ($7million) every year to vandals who unlawfully tap of its raw water pipeline, running from Kaduna River, revealed Idi Mukhtar, Managing Director of Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC). “We require a particular amount of water sufficient enough to generate steam and other industrial consumption needs, but because of the...

The Federal Government of Nigeria has identified climate-friendly projects valued at N52 billion ($165 million), according to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Bukar Hassan. Hassan who declared this during a meeting of Permanent Secretaries on Green Bonds in Abuja said the project would be financed through Green bonds. He noted that the government plans to issue the first...

Trade volumes between Nigeria and South Africa fell to about N1.3 trillion ($4.1billion) in 2016 from N1.5trillion ($4.8billion) in 2015, South African Ambassador to Nigeria, Lulu Aaron-Mnguni, revealed. Aaron-Mnguni who disclosed this in Abuja on Thursday said that bilateral relations between the two countries were excellent but could still be improved. According to the envoy, trade increased...

PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the world's largest professional-services firms, in its latest report places Nigeria at the 14th position among thirty-two countries that will be world's most powerful economies by 2050. The report, titled “The long view: how will the global economic order change by 2050?” ranked the countries by their projected global gross domestic product at purchasing power...

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, on Wednesday revealed plans by the Nigerian Government to increase customs duties on tomato imports and remove the tariffs on some farming equipment. This is aimed at promoting local production and investment in the agricultural sector. According to the Minister, the tax on some greenhouse equipment which currently amounts to...