Malian government will provide universities students a first lot of digital tablets for 2017-2018 academic year. The company YATTCO is in charge of this supply of 13,000 tablets for a total cost of CFA3, 000,835,650. The operation should be carried out within 45 days, thus not later than mid-February 2018. Universal Access’s fund management agency is the sponsor of this contract on behalf of...

The University of Lomé will soon be equipped with a mining information center. The center’s establishment falls under a project to rehabilitate buildings and practice rooms at the departments of chemistry and geology of the faculty of sciences of Lomé. The center’s establishment will be financed with a loan that the Togolese government secured from the International Development Association...

After guavas, it is the turn of Egypt’s strawberries to be banned from access to the Saudi market, due to the non-conformity of the fruits to pesticide maximum residue levels (MRL). The ban will come into effect on Jan 18, 2018. The information was disclosed by the General Organization Committee for Import and Export Control (GOEIC), an agency of the Egyptian Minister of trade. It is the...

Gabon wishes to become the world’s biggest manganese producer in 2019. This was revealed by the country’s minister of mines, Christian Magnagna, minister of mines, in an interview with the local daily L’Union.  “We plan to reach 6,000,000 tons of manganese in 2018, and become the world’s leading manganese producer by 2019”, the official declared. The project includes as...

The newspaper Agence de Presse Sénégalaise (APS), revealed in a statement that a real estate platform was expected to be launched on January 10, 2018, in Dakar to provide “better land security and avoid seller-buyer conflicts”. Referred to as Asset management and verification division (DGVB), the platform “which is already operational for people willing to purchase a land...

Alexandre Froment-Curtil (photo), the new CEO of Vodafone Egypt and Yasser ElKady, Egyptian minister of ICT, has discussed the company’s business and investments plans for the coming years. This was during an audience granted by Yasser Elkady to Vodafone Egypt’s CEO on January 5, 2018, a few days after the latter took office. During the meeting, at which Ayman Essam, Director of legal...

In an increasingly speculative market context, subject to many prices fluctuation factors, it will be profitable for Africa to get onto the specialty coffee market, Edward George, research manager at Ecobank, told Ecofin Agency. According to him, this orientation on a segment which represents only 10% of the world production is crucial because the continent can no more compete...

Mobile money transfers are significantly more expensive since a week in Côte d’Ivoire due to a 0.5% tax applied by the government. This tax is indicated in the tax schedule of the law n° 2017-870 of December 27th, 2017 on 2018 budget. According to the schedule, the tax is collected under the same conditions, procedures, sanctions, and securities as the value-added tax. The tax must be paid...

Presstalis, the French media distribution corporation, has suspended the distribution of International print media in Senegal and in Côte d’Ivoire. According to primary information received, this is the result of the local distributors’ failure to pay their debts to the French company Indeed, Edipresse in Côte d’Ivoire and Press Distribution Agency (ADP) in Senegal owe CFA190 million and...

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), subsidiary of the World Bank in charge of the private sector, plans to grant a new line of credit to Egyptian banks to finance SMEs, women’s entrepreneurship especially. The soon to be granted amount has not been disclosed but Sammar Essmat, Gender and private sector expert for Europe, Central Asia, Middle-East and Northern Africa at IFC, indicated...