The first round of the presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire has been officially set for 25 October, the government announced on 5 August. “All will be done in order to meet this deadline”, declared Bruno Koné, spokesperson for the government, after a cabinet meeting in Abidjan. The 2015 election is a crucial date for Côte d’Ivoire, after a decade of politico-military crisis which...

The initiative Akon Lighting Africa will soon be producing educational tablets powered by solar energy. The three co-founders Akon, Thione Niang and Samba Bathily, announced this during the closing session of their summer tour which ended in Benin. “With the solar power that we are proposing, one can connect all sorts of appliances, telephones to communicate, refrigerators to conserve food...

The French bank group Société Générale has been summoned as a target witness in the case known as «ill-gotten gains», a dossier on alleged misappropriation of public funds implicating Teodorin Obiang, the son of the President of Equatorial Guinea, reports AFP on 3 August, citing a legal source. The status of a target witness is in between being indicted and being a simple witness. The...

The Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co announced, on 4 August, that it will open an office in Côte d’Ivoire in order to invest between USD 3 and 10 billion, particularly in the sector of infrastructure. The announcement was made by Hironobu Ishikawa, COO of the group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, during a work visit in Abidjan. “I made a promise to the Prime Minister to come...

Guinea and Iran have renewed, on 3 August, the convention on the Société des Bauxites de Dabola-Tougué (SBDT.SA), for a new term of 25 years renewable, based on the new Guinean mining code. The convention was signed in July 1992, for a period of 25 years, then ratified and promulgated on 06 October of the same year. “This is a revival of a very important project in the cooperation between...

The government of Cameroon has launched its own subsea fiber optic cable network on 4 August 2015. The infrastructure named Nigeria-Cameroon Submarine Cable System (NCSCS) will link the city of Kribi, in the Southern region, to Lagos in Nigeria. During the ceremony marking the launch of the installation site of this telecom infrastructure, Jean Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, Minister of Posts and...

The Bir Sebaa and Bir Msana (Hassi Messaoud) deposits started production on Saturday and will supply, in a first phase, a cumulated input of 32,000 barrels per day which will strengthen the oil production of Algeria, reports APS. The Bir Sebaa deposit, located 150 km North-East of Hassi Messaoud, is a reserve of approximately 758 million barrels of which 25% recoverable. The initial production...

Sterling Energy PLC, an upstream oil and gas company listed in London, has finalised the acquisition of a 40.5% stake in the production sharing contract (PSC) on Block C-3 covering 9800 km2, offshore Mauritania. The acquisition made through Sterling Energy Mauritania Ltd, its 100% owned subsidiary, is within the scope of its sales and purchase agreement with Tullow Mauritania Ltd which is the...

StratMin Global Resources PLC, a company in the graphite sector in Madagascar, is producing 900 kg of refined graphite an hour in its Loharano project, it announced on 3 August. This production rate follows the successful completion of the second stage of the optimisation of its Loharano project processing plant, the company listed in London advised. StratMin emphasises having significantly...

The Senegalese business school opens the first course on oil trading of the continent, in partnership with Philia SA, a company operating in the oil and gas sector, headquartered in Geneva. The idea is to train on the African continent the traders and logistics coordinators of an essential and strategic sector. The world market for oil and its derivatives is subjected to fluctuations which have...