In Cote d’Ivoire, banks are presently unwilling to increase loans to local cocoa exporters who were forced to turn to them after producer price rose by 10% for the new season. “The loans we contracted are not enough to pay volumes we bought from the coffee-cocoa council (CCC) because the producer price increase took us by surprise. That’s why we are trying to get more from banks,” chief...

By privatizing four companies, the Ivorian government got 40.494 billion CFA francs ($69.2 million), announced privatization committee president Koffi Konan Christian at the ceremony for the public offering of the State’s shares in Sucrivoire, on October 4, 2016. The four firms privatized are the société des mines d’Ity (SMI), the société ivoirienne de banque (SIB), Abengourou’s...

South African retailer Woolworths announced in a statement published on Oct. 5 that it will buy Australian men’s fashion brand Politix. Woolworths which sells upmarket food and clothing said the deal would be sealed through its Australian subsidiary, Country Road Group, without revealing its price. The SA retailer is already in Australia where it acquired over the past years, various...

Mining firm Exxaro Resources sold last Monday its Inyanda coal mine in South Africa, to a JV made of Lurco Group and Burgh Group. This comes a few weeks after the competition commission approved the transaction saying it was unlikely to prevent or lessen competition in the defined markets for the supply of coal. “We are delighted to deliver Inyanda Colliery to its new owners. Inyanda Colliery...

Land speculation in Mali is getting out of hands, reports Mali actu citing the minister of State domains and land issues who met local authorities of Kati to discuss land management. “Land speculators withdrew from banks 1,534 billion CFA francs in 2015 for personal use (houses, cars and luxury trips) which is about the same amount as the 2016 national budget. These few individuals were able...

The Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Kachikwu (photo), has announced that a Chinese delegation is to visit the country this month for talks on the West African country's oil and gas industry.This is coming four months after the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that it signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) worth $80 billion with Chinese...

Owner of multiple oil palm plantations in Sierra Leone, the Société financière des caoutchoucs (Socfin) has angered local producers who claim that “some of its investment is taking place in the form of land grabbing”. The producers formed the Malen Affected Land Owners and Users Association (MALOA) to fight against Socfin. “We want investors. What we are against is people coming to...

Italian Edison is to start the drilling of three new wells in its gas concession in Egypt in January 2017, the company’s Commercial Manager, Tarek Shalaby, revealed. The three wells will be drilled in the South Edco, Abu Qir, and North West El Gendy concessions and the company plans to start the development of the North Abu Qir-3 by December 2016 to produce 80 Mmcf/d of gas and 3,500bpd of...

Sound Energy Plc. is expecting to produce its first commercial gas from the Tendrara assets in Morocco in the first half of 2019, a corporate presentation on the company’s website revealed. The document revealed that the development will start with the horizontal well, TE-7, followed by TE-8, which will test the level of the gas opportunity on the acreage.Near-term potential of the asset...

Aiming to sanitize land management and optimize allotment, Congo’s Minister of land issues and public domain, Martin Parfait Aimé Coussoud Mavoungou announced on September 29, in Brazzaville, a series of measures to concretely improve transparency and coordination of cadastral policies, Agence d’information d’Afrique central reports. Blaming professionals, he denounced “insufficiencies...