Africa Business News

Qatar’s prime minister announced Doha is seeking to provide one million doses of a coronavirus vaccine to fans attending the 2022 World Cup in the country.
The Gulf nation has been slowly opening up as it continues with its mass vaccination programme.
Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al-Thani says there is the possibility that some countries will not be able to vaccinate all their citizens.
He says Qatar will not allow fans to enter stadiums without being fully vaccinated against the virus.
Sheikh Khalid also said that approximately 72 per cent of Qatar’s 2.75 million population will have received at least one dose of vaccine within the next week.

A statement released by the continental organisation says CAF president Patrice Motsepe believes Africa can succeed where Europe failed and launch a Super League.
He says they have been following attempts by some top European clubs to form a Super League and will learn from their experience and pitfalls,” said the South African.
Motsepe is pushing forward after FIFA president Gianni Infantino told CAF officials last year that he favoured 20 permanent African Super League members and additional competitors through qualifying.
He did suggest, however, that each permanent member should contribute $20 mn annually — a target even the richest African clubs would find hard to meet.

Commonwealth Bank says it would sell its Australian general insurance business to South Africa’s biggest privately-owned insurer Hollard Group, marking the completion of a multi-year divestment strategy following a series of scandals.
Australia’s largest lender says it will sell CommInsure General Insurance, for an upfront cash consideration of A$625 million ($468 million), plus deferred payments.
The lender says it expected the sale would deliver a post-tax gain of A$90 million and further increase its common equity tier 1 capital by about A$400 million, which according to analysts ups the odds that CBA will return extra cash to investors.
CBA also expects to get a pre-completion dividend.

The Senator Representing Kebbi North, Yahaya Abdullahi, has blamed what he describes as a poor security arrangement in the country for the Kebbi School abduction.
Abdullahi says the number of security personnel, specifical policemen across the country, is grossly insufficient to fight the level of insecurity the country grapples with.
He says in the entire nation, there are only 350,000 policemen and a good solution would be to allow more community policing.
He believes that banditry in the country has become a recurring decimal and we should not look at it as something that is just happening today.

President Muhammadu Buhari has affirmed that dialogue is the way to resolve the southeast's security situation.
Senator Ngige says the President has also enabled series of dialogues to be held with leaders in the region.
He added that discussions at the meeting equally encapsulated what the south-east is demanding from the Federal Government and what the government plans to do for the region to assuage the people's feelings.
He further disclosed that complaints from the national labour union regarding a breach of the agreement had reached the President and they have begun plans to halt any further friction in the midst of the fragile situation within Kaduna State.

Operators in the aviation industry and the Akwa Ibom State government have taken steps towards developing maintenance facilities in Nigeria.
Industry experts said the move would end the huge resources spent overseas in the maintenance of aircraft, which is the highest operations cost to airlines after aviation fuel by Nigerian carriers and others.
The Head of Engineering and Maintenance of Ibom Air, Mr Lookman Animaseun, says that it was good that the NCAA was licensing MRO organisations in Nigeria to save the country about $2 billion spent on aircraft maintenance overseas every year.
Animaseun says besides the Nigerian market, airline operators in West and Central Africa would also bring their aircraft to be maintained in Nigeria, which would attract forex to the country.

The National Democratic Coalition has written to President Muhammadu Buhari over the rising security challenges in the country and canvassed as a panacea, the return to the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions to replace the extant 1999 grundnorm, which it said the military imposed on Nigerians.
The pro-democracy group pressed for the suspension of further elections until the country gets a new constitution.
NADECO, in the letter to the president, accused him of fuelling secessionist agitations through the Fulanisation policy of his administration and its disregard for the constitution.
It also decried the deterioration of national security and political instability under Buhari’s administration.

A 1933 Double Eagle sold for a record-shattering $18.9m at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Tuesday, and the world’s rarest stamp raked in a whopping $8.3m.Sotheby’s says the 1933 Double Eagle has a richly captivating history that encapsulates large swathes of United States history and has been at the centre of intrigue for more than 80 years.The coins were struck but never issued for use. All 1933 Double Eagles were ordered destroyed after President Franklin Roosevelt, in an effort to lift America’s battered economy from the depths of the Great Depression, took the nation off the gold standard..The privately-owned 1933 Double Eagle coin was sold by American shoe designer and collector Stuart Weitzman.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a declaration on Tuesday aimed at ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 after Russia failed in a bid to remove language it said pushed countries to decriminalize prostitution and drug use.Deputy Russian U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Chumakov says from the Global AIDS strategy 2021 to 2026, UNAIDS considers these to include laws that in any way persecute prostitution and drug use.Australian U.N. Ambassador Mitch Fifield pushed back against Russia, saying that reforming laws and policies to ensure that they are grounded in evidence and human rights is essential for an effective HIV response.

Miner Vale SA says it will settle in advance liabilities of around US$2.5 billion related to the project finance for the Nacala logistic corridor that serves a coal mine in Mozambique.Vale says it will have fulfilled all the conditions for completion of its purchase of Mitsui & Co Ltd’s stake in the Moatize mine and the logistics corridor.Vale’s press office explained that Payment was necessary as the project finance conditions did not allow Mitsui to sell its stake.Vale says it will start consolidating the Moatize mine and CLN in its financial statements.Vale says its EBITDA will no longer be burdened with costs related to debt service, investment in maintenance of operations and others charges that in 2020 impacted its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization by about $300 million.