An African Development Bank Group delegation, led by Dr. Khaled F. Sherif (photo), Vice-President, Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, has arrived in Cairo for a four-day dialogue mission with the Egyptian Government beginning Monday. The meetings, taking place from March 4-7, 2019 in Cairo, are to reinforce the Bank’s support for Egypt and its President, Abdel...

The Egyptian minister of communications and information technology Amr Talaat met his Saudi peer Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 held in Barcelona. During their meetings, they discussed the strengthening of the two countries’ partnerships in terms of IT, e-government and digital transformation. They agreed to set a team to monitor the implementation...

Central Bank of Kenya announced, last Friday, a 25- year Ksh50 billion ($500 million) bond issuance to fund energy, water and transport projects. The Central bank indicated that the operation should start this month and investors could invest between Ksh100,000 ($1,000) and Ksh20 million ($200,000). Only state-run firms, semi-autonomous government agencies and public universities can exceed the...

Wafa Assurance, the insurance branch of Morrocan bank  Attijariwafa Bank, issued a profit warning about its 2018 results on March 1, 2019. Its managers expect MAD600 million of net profit. This is the poorest performance ever recorded by the insurer since 2015. According to the Wafa Assurance, this is due to the rise of the claims ratio that rose to MAD350 million thus reducing the earned...

MTN group signed a 5-year agreement with Ericsson for the deployment of new products and Mobile Money services in 13 African and Middle Eastern countries via the Ericsson Wallet platform.  According to Ericsson, this platform lets mobile telephony operators reuse their existing assets and merge their telecom offers and financial services for a complete solution that meets...

The asset management department of the National Bank of Kenya (NBK) generated Ksh2.5 billion between 2015 and 2019, some Kenyan media indicated. However, there is no detail about how the department generated such volume. Let’s note that NBK is not the only bank to show some interest in its premium clients. In 2018, the local subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank also opened premium agencies...

Private equity fundraising in Africa culminated to about $905 million in February 2019. French fund manager Amethis Finance was the leader with  €305 million ($347 million) for the first closing of its Amethis Fund II. The other major fundraisings were announced by Investisseurs & Partenaires ($85.3 million), Partech ($142 million), SunFund ($87 million), as well as South...

Rwanda will bring satellite internet to schools in remote areas in the framework of its ambition to let Rwandans take advantage of the opportunities offered by internet in learning and socio-economic development. In that regard, it will rely on Oneweb’s satellite launched on February 27, 2019. The first school to access this satellite internet is St Pierre Nkombo secondary school. According...

The UNCTAD will provide technical assistance to Côte d’Ivoire for the elaboration of a national investment policy. In that regard, the UN institution visited Abidjan this week for bilateral meetings with public and private institutions and many actors of the Ivorian economy to discuss some investment-related issues. According to Chantal Dupasquier, Chief of the UNCTAD’s Policy Reviews...

More than XOF800 billion ($1.4 billion) will be invested to extend and modernize Abidjan’s autonomous port in Côte d’Ivoire by 2020, the prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly indicates.   In the framework of that project, Vridi canal inaugurated last February 21 has been resized. The infrastructure is estimated at $255,575,018 (about XOF150 billion), 85% funded by Eximbank China and...