Over 2017’s first eight months, Zimbabwe’s gold output rose by 10% to 14.6 tons. Based on official data relayed by Reuters, the increase is due to better performances of informal small producers. Statistics from Fidelity Printers and Refiners, branch of the central bank which purchases all of the country’s gold production, small producers produced 7.2 tons of gold over the period reviewed,...

The government of Burkina Faso has adopted last Wednesday, during a council of ministers, the 2018 budget draft. The latter, just like that of the year before, is not balanced, in terms of expenditures and revenues.  Indeed, while revenues projected in the budget stand at FCFA2,006.41 billion (about $3.6 billion), expenditures are fixed at FCFA2,429.80 billion (about $4.4...

HIV-infected Africans will soon have access to a state-of-the-art treatment, for only $75 a year. Manufacturers of generic AIDS drugs will start producing millions of the pills for Africa. This with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which will subsidy a major part of the new treatment which integrates dolutégravir, an integrase inhibitor that avoids the drug resistance...

ASKY, the Pan-African airline, is pleased to inform its esteemed customers of the reorganization of its Schedule as of November 1, 2017. With the new Schedule, transit time in Lome has been reduced from 3hours to 1hour 45 minutes maximum and some flights have less than 40 minutes connection.   With the re-opening of Banjul, Freetown and Monrovia, passengers now have the possibility of a...

A consortium of seven South Korean companies are looking to invest in Zimbabwe’s power sector. The seven firms are Seondo Electric, HISC, Parkmate Investment, Bund Holding Group, Jung-Myung Engineering, Korea Consortium and Hyundai Power Solatech. “Project financing shall be arranged by HISC. The total project cost is yet to be established, but the first phase should be about $300...

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) just announced the launch of three news website covering solely Ethiopia and Eritrea, all three in local dialects. The languages which are spoken not only in Ethiopia and Eritrea but in the whole African Horn, are Amharic, Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya. “We know that there is a great deal of hunger for audiences in Ethiopia and Eritrea to access a broad...

Regrouped last September 19, members of the economic and social council of Guinea pondered on major challenges such land issues in rural and urban areas, Mosaique Guinée reports. The issue is to be dealt with by the infrastructure, decentralization, rural development and land development commission. “By tackling this issue, the commission No2 wanted to deal with one of the most...

Mining firm Roxgold which is active in Burkina Faso on the Yaramoko project should produce in 2017 more gold than it expected to. Indeed, the firm expects its output to stand at 115,000-125,000 ounces of gold, against 105,000-115,000 ounces before. The company’s CEO, John Dorward said the scaling-up is to be attributed to good performance at “Yaramoko’s 55 Zone where mining rates and head...

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the United Nations Food and Agriuclture Organization (FAO) signed on September 20, 2017, in New York a memorandum of understanding to promote ICT-driven innovation in agriculture. The two institutions will in this framework team up to facilitate the development of measures and regulations related to e-agriculture. The final objective of the...

The Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) secured yesterday in Paris, a syndicated loan of $1.3 billion from a pool of 25 banks to pre-finance the purchase of 850,000 tons of cocoa during 2017-18 season which will begin next month. This was revealed to Reuters by the Cocobod’s deputy managing director, Yaw Adu-Ampomah. The sum which is 27% lower compared to that obtained last year ($1.8 billion)...