The South African telecoms group MTN has decided to divest its tower operations in Ghana and Uganda. The company will sell its 49% shares in Ghana Tower Interco B.V. and Uganda Tower Interco B.V. to AT Sher Netherlands Coöperatief U.A., a subsidiary of American Tower Corporation, for the sum of $523 million. MTN explained that through this strategic repositioning, which is in line with the...

The Kenyan arm of Standard Chartered Bank announced, in a recent note sent to customers, it is cutting the interest charge on loans granted before the end of 2019 by 0.5 percentage points. The measure is to comply with the latest decision of the Monetary Policy Committee of the country's Central Bank, which lowered its key rate by the same amount. In theory, a cut in the key rate (the Central...

Groupe Empire will organize, on January 11 at Novotel Hotel, a ceremony to reward the best business leaders of Benin. The first edition of Benin CEO Awards will reward 15 business leaders from various sectors of activity who contributed to the development of the country in 2019 through innovative initiatives with high economic and social impact. “These models of managers were evaluated based...

The Ghanaian government wants to raise $3 billion from its diaspora to finance development projects in agriculture, infrastructure, and tourism, the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta (pictured) announced last week. The fundraising is expected to start before the end of the current year. The official said the government plans to offer more attractive interest rates on deposits in public banks....

Following a satisfactory third review under the Extended Credit Facility arrangement signed with Burkina Faso in March 2018, the International Monetary Fund approved the disbursement of $24.9 million for the country. In the related document, the Fund says Burkina’s economic growth remains resilient despite the rising security crisis. Growth was 6.4% in the first half of the year and is...

Ethiopia is starting the year 2020 on a good note. The businessman Mohammed al-Amoudi announced he is investing 4 billion birr (about $126 million) to build a huge and modern edible oil processing plant in the country. The first stone was laid on Dec 28 in Addis Ababa in the presence of the City Mayor Takele Uma, local media reported. According to the official, the project aligns with his...

Construction of the Lagos-Abidjan corridor, the deal which was signed since March 2014, will start by 2022. The good news was announced by AfDB Chairman, Akinwumi Adesina, on the sidelines of the 56th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government held Saturday in Abuja. “The Lagos-Abidjan highway will become a reality [...] That’s why the African Development Bank...

US cybersecurity researcher Bob Diachenko reports that the personal data of 267 million Facebook users has been exposed on hacker forums. The users' identifiers, names and phone numbers were freely available on the platforms concerned. In response, Facebook says they are “looking into this issue, but believe this is likely information obtained before changes we made in the past few years to...

Turkey says it is getting ready to send military troops to Libya to assist the Government of National Accord (GNA) in its fight against attacks by Marshal Khalifa Haftar's forces. The announcement was made on Thursday by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured). President Erdogan indicates that by next month, a new law is expected to be passed by the parliament to authorize the...

On 11 December 2019, the African branch of Indian telecom group Bharti Airtel, Airtel Africa, unveiled its intention to list part of its Malawi subsidiary on the local stock exchange. The listing price is set at MK12.69 (0.02 USD) per share. According to the company, the offer is expected to comprise 1.65 billion shares, representing 15% of the issued share capital. A further 550 million shares,...