Louis Rene Peter Larose (photo), executive director of the World Bank Africa Group One, recently visited the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) to find out measures that its institution could take to assist the local power industry. The main goal here is to help the country recover its pre-war energy capacity. “Energy is the lifeblood of every economy and with what I have observed so far,...

The Tunisian government plans to award contract for the construction of a digital infrastructure, a keystone in the implementation of the Tunisie Numérique 2020 (Digital Tunisia 2020) project, to a third party company. By proceeding this way, the State aims to preserve telecom operators against risks of duplicates and from unnecessary spending into new sites. It was during the closed council of...

Platinum miner Lonmin plc secured a $50 million funding for a Bulk Tailings Treatment (BTT) in South Africa. The firm announced that it has already received a first tranche of $9 million and that work has started. Lonmin intends to re-process 26 tons of mine residues at a pace of 300,000 per month. Production is expected to begin in 2018. Once stable, the project should produce about...

Egyptian Minister for International Cooperation, Sahar Nasr, announced on August 18 that Saudi Arabia is going to deposit $2bn at the Central Bank of Egypt, in respect to an agreement signed by the two nations. The accord which according to the Minister is part of bilateral conventions signed last April between Cairo and Riyadh, as Saudi Arabia’s king, Salman bin Abdulaziz, visited...

Egypt hired banking groups JP Morgan, Citibank, BNP Paribas and Natixis to arrange $3-$5bn Eurobonds, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement published on August 18. Issuance for the bonds was approved at the beginning of August by the Egyptian government. Since the revolution which brought down President Mubarak’s regime in January 2011, Egypt has been struggling to restart its...

Due to Drought, Brazil might be forced to come back on its decision to ban cocoa imports from Cote d’Ivoire. In fact, the nation’s cocoa processing industry association (AIPC) said it was putting pressure on the government to this end. This should lead cocoa imports in the country to grow sevenfold compared to the previous year. “For us, importing is horrible because it's always better to...

“The next three years will be more critical than the past 50”. Such is the opinion of 1,300 CEOs of large and medium companies from various countries like China, USA, South Africa or the Great Britain. Surveyed by the KPMG consulting firm in the framework of its 2016 Global CEO outlook entitled “Now or Never”, most of these CEOs like German Karl-Heinz Streibich believe that “Digital...

Cote d’Ivoire will receive next September a delegation of Chinese experts which will evaluate the needs of the West African nation in sectors like cashew, cocoa, rice, pineapple and mangoes. The visit should contribute to the growth of the China-Cote d’Ivoire agricultural cooperation. According to the Ivorian Minister of Agriculture, the delegation’s visit comes after a work visit by...

Tullow Oil on Thursday, announced that first oil has flowed from the Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme (TEN) fields offshore Ghana, to the FPSO Prof. John Evans Atta Mills. According to the company, three years after the Plan of Development was approved by the Ghanaian Government in May 2013, first oil has been reached on time and on budget. It added that the TEN field’s startup process is now well...

Aminex plc and Solo Oil have announced that the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) has paid them for the gas pumped from their Kiliwani North-1 well in Tanzania. Although the amount of the payment was not disclosed, Solo oil's chairman, Neil Ritson, said it was quite a small amount which reflects the preliminary commissioning rates.“[We are] delighted that the first payment for...