The African Development Bank has approved a US$50 million line of credit to Nigeria’s Fidelity Bank Plc to support small and medium sized, and women-owned enterprises in selected transformative sectors, including close to a hundred SMEs in manufacturing, health and education. Approved by the Bank’s Board on 10 October 2018, the facility is fully dedicated to financing micro, small and...

Between 2014 and 2018, Subsaharan countries’ average public debt ratio to GDP increased from 32.4% to 45.9%, a report published last Wednesday by the World Economic Forum reveals. According to the authors of the report, this increase is due to the trend in public expenditures after the 2004-2014 period which saw a continued reduction of public debt in the region. "After the end of the...

Nguyen Van Son (on the left side of the picture), deputy managing director of Halotel, announced on October 16, that the Tanzanian subsidiary of Vietnamese telecommunications group Viettel was still pursuing its strategy to become the second largest operator in Tanzania’s telecommunications market. During a press conference organized in Dar es Salaam, Nguyen Van Son revealed that within three...

On October 16, 2018, Moody’s downgraded Tunisia’s outlook from stable to negative due to an increased external vulnerability in an increasingly challenging external environment. The rating of this north African country whose economy has been painfully recovering since the 2011 popular uprising against former president Ben-Ali was affirmed at B2. The American rating agency explained...

The Moroccan group Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP) plans to acquire banks in Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, and Tanzania, Bloomberg reported on 17 October citing one of the group’s managers. "We’re looking for opportunities in Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana and Tanzania in the medium-term", said Kamal Mokdad, co-chief executive of BCP. The manager added that the bank wants to "source" 30% of its revenues from...

The pharmaceutical company Cipla inaugurated on October 14, a plant specialized in the production of solutions for the treatment of respiratory diseases, in the presence of Moroccan health minister, Anas Doukkali. Constructed at Ain El Aouda, a suburb in Rabat, Morocco’s capital, on a 4,000 m2 field, this plant is the result of the partnership between two Moroccan companies namely...

African telecommunications regulators plan to mutualize their efforts for a better regulation of the market on the continent. In that regard, there would be a meeting from October 16 to 18 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, for the first African conference on digital economy regulation (conférence africaine sur la régulation et l’économie numérique-CAREN).  During the event organized by...

Kenya plans to merge three public financial institutions to create a large bank dedicated to the financing of infrastructures projects,  The East African revealed on October 12, 2018, citing sources close to the case.   According to an ad hoc committee recently set by the public treasury, the country considers Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC),  Industrial...

Today 17 October 2018, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its 2018 global competitiveness report. While the world ranking is dominated by the US, the main observation about Africa is that it is over-represented in the lower classes of this ranking. Subsahara: last in the ranking On examination of the data provided by the WEF, it appears that African economies are really less...

Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP) finalized the purchase of the Mauritius-based Banque des Mascareignes and its subsidiary Banque des Mascareignes Madagascar. BCP, present in 14 African countries received the approval of statutory authorities in Mauritius, Madagascar, and Morocco. With its Madagascar based partner Sipromad which operates in various sectors in Africa and India, BCP now controls two...