Tunisia plans to issue its first Sukuk by July 2021. According to Finance Minister Ali Kooli, this Islamic financing facility will make it possible to mobilize up to TND300 million ($111 million). The program is part of the State's financing strategy for the 2021 budget. It aims to offer more attractive financing alternatives to Tunisia which is already facing an economic crisis marked by a high...

The government of Zimbabwe said it has mobilized a total of $100 million to buy doses of Covid-19 vaccine. The objective is to inoculate 60% of the population to achieve herd immunity. Under this plan, the country is expecting at least 20 million doses of the vaccine through an initiative by the African Union. The money will be taken from the country’s 2020 and 2021 budgets. "The...

Ratings agency S&P Global has affirmed its “AAA/A-1+” foreign currency issuer credit rating of the African Development Bank with a stable outlook. The ratings agency said its outlook reflected the expectation that the African Development Bank (AfDB) would, over the next two years, “prudently manage its capital while maintaining solid levels of high-quality liquidity assets and a robust...

Ecobank reports it ended 2020 with a positive accounting result of $149.5 million, up 104% compared to that of 2019. On a financial and operational level, net profit, which takes into account depreciation, amortization, income, and other operating expenses, declined by 66% to $94 million compared to $274.9 million in 2019. However, the international standard for the publication of...

The Lagos financial market is among those that have challenged covid-19 with record performances. All the compartments of this stock exchange experienced a very positive dynamic last year. The market posted the best performance of all the stock exchanges that are followed by international investors, with an index up 50%. At the end of the year, the NSE's market capitalization was up 62.42% from...

Airtel Africa, the African arm of the Indian telecom group Bharti Airtel, will not bid for the telecom licenses that the Ethiopian government is putting up for sale as part of the process of liberalizing the national telecom market. In an interview with Reuters on Friday 29 January, Raghunath Mandava (pictured), the company's chief executive officer, said the company will instead use the current...

The World Bank announced it has approved the disbursement of $50 million to support the electricity sector in Sierra Leone. The money will be provided by the International Development Association (IDA) in partnership with the Japan Policy and Human Resources Development Fund, which is granting $2.7 million of the amount. It will bring clean energy to 276,000 Sierra Leoneans and 700...

Last year, the share of foreign investors in Kenya's public debt increased by more than 22%, or more than $6.2 billion. The figure is featured in the weekly statistics published by the Central Bank of the country. According to the institution's figures, Kenya's external public debt increased from KSh3,106 billion or $28.2 billion in 2019 to KSh3,793 billion ($34.4 billion) by the end...

In spite of the particularly challenging international economic situation arising from the health crisis, the Republic of Djibouti has entered the year 2021 with determination. According to the World Bank's Global Economic Prospects report, Djibouti is expected to experience the strongest GDP growth in Africa this year with a projected rate of 7.1%. This outlook is by no means coincidental....

Help is on the way for the global cocoa supply chain, severely threatened by climate change. A new project by the African Development Bank and the International Agroforestry Agency (ICRAF) would bring relief to two Ivorian smallholder cocoa farmers’ communities in Soubre and Vavoua currently grappling with declining yields caused by climate change and worsened by the COVID-19...