Africa Business News

President Donald Trump has told US firms they have 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok and WeChat, claiming the Chinese apps are a threat to national security.
Mr Trump signed two executive orders targeting two of China's biggest apps.
It is a major escalation in Washington's stand-off with Beijing over its power in global technology.
The announcement comes as Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok ahead of a 15 September deadline set by Mr Trump.
The executive orders against the short-video sharing platform TikTok - owned by Chinese firm ByteDance - and the messaging service WeChat - owned by the Tencent conglomerate is the latest measure in an increasingly broad Trump administration campaign against China.
Analyst however said Mr Trump's orders are likely to be liable to legal challenges.

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Multilateral lender on Thursday said Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank has committed $400 million in loans and guarantees to Mozambique’s $20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.
Afreximbank’s move follows a similar commitment for the same sum by The African Development Bank last month.
Afreximbank in a statement said the financing will be used to partially finance activities required to extract natural gas offshore, its transfer to onshore processing facilities and then its conversion to LNG for export around the world.
The Mozambique LNG Area 1 Project is ranked Africa’s single largest foreign direct investment to date. It will consist of two LNG trains with a total capacity of around 13 million tons per year.
French energy major Total, the operator, has secured a $14.9 billion senior debt agreement, the biggest project financing Africa has seen.

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The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation on Thursday said China’s CNOOC Ltd and South Atlantic Petroleum signed a preliminary agreement to resolve a dispute over Oil Mining Lease 130.
NNPC on its official Twitter account said that it signed a Heads of Terms (a non-binding broad outline of a deal) with the Chinese and Nigerian firms that seeks to address disagreements over the mining lease’s production sharing contract.
It did not provide details of the dispute nor the new proposed terms.
Oil Mining Lease 130 contains fields including Akpo and Egina.

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South Africa’s rand traded nearly 1% weaker early on Friday, near its lowest in 10 weeks, amid souring emerging market sentiment led by Turkey’s currency crisis and increased tension between China and the United States.
At 0700 GMT the rand was down 0.9% at 17.5550 per dollar, not far off Thursday’s session low 17.6596, its softest since late May.
Turkey’s lira plunged to a record low on Thursday, just two years after a devastating currency crisis that brought a recession and exodus of foreign investment, raising fears that state efforts to stabilize the currency could fizzle and spark bigger problems for the Middle East’s largest economy.

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This episode is sponsored by
· Afrolit Podcast: Hosted by Ekua PM, Afrolit shares the stories of multi-faceted Africans one episode at a time. https://open.spotify.com/show/2nJxiiYRyfMQlDEXXpzlZS?si=mmgODX3NQ-yfQvR0JRH-WA

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Data on Friday showed that the South African central bank further cut its government bond purchases in July, buying 2.5 billion rand ($142 million) worth, or half the amount it bought in June, to bring its total holdings to 38.4 billion rand.
Rampant selling of government debt in March and April, as the coronavirus struck, forced the bank into emergency liquidity measures, including a quantitative easing style purchase of bonds in the secondary market.
Governor Lesetja Kganyago at the rate meeting two weeks ago stressed the bond buying was to support liquidity rather than finance government’s ballooning budget deficit.

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This episode is sponsored by
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The Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison, says the central bank has put in place stringent measures to rapidly detect signs of distress exhibited by financial institutions, to immediately step in and protect the funds of depositors.
The Governor says the measures include tightening of the bank’s supervisory role to stop the financial malfeasance that led to the collapse of some financial institutions including nine local banks.
Dr. Addison while speaking at the 2020 GIMPA Law School webinar Conference on the Banking and Financial Sector Crisis, said the central bank has learnt from previous events, hence the decision to have early warning signs in place to prevent another financial crisis.
He said the supervision of banks has been strengthened with systems and structures to identify problems and proactively mitigate to manage vulnerabilities and threats to stability. Going forward, the financial sector will require constant regulatory and policy attention to mitigate risks.

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· Afrolit Podcast: Hosted by Ekua PM, Afrolit shares the stories of multi-faceted Africans one episode at a time. https://open.spotify.com/show/2nJxiiYRyfMQlDEXXpzlZS?si=mmgODX3NQ-yfQvR0JRH-WA

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Capricorn said the Zambian subsidiary of Nigeria’s Access Bank has agreed to buy Cavmont Capital Holdings, the Zambian arm of Namibian financial services group Capricorn, for a nominal fee of 1 kwacha ($0.0014).
The Namibian entity owns 98.03% of Cavmont Capital Holdings, which owns 100% of loss-making Cavmont Bank. Under the terms of the deal, Access Bank Zambia will acquire the entire issued ordinary share capital, assets and liabilities of Cavmont Bank.
Capricorn on Thursday said it has agreed to reinvest 300 million kwacha into the new entity as part of the agreement.
Cavmont Bank recorded a loss after tax of 19.8 million Namibian dollars ($1.14 million) in 2019, an improvement on a 46.6 million Namibian dollar loss the previous financial year.

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This episode is sponsored by
· Afrolit Podcast: Hosted by Ekua PM, Afrolit shares the stories of multi-faceted Africans one episode at a time. https://open.spotify.com/show/2nJxiiYRyfMQlDEXXpzlZS?si=mmgODX3NQ-yfQvR0JRH-WA

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The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, says commercial banks in the country owe telecommunication over N17bn for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data access.
This debt, according to him, accumulated following the regulator’s suspension of its determination on USSD pricing in 2019.
Danbatta spoke at ATCON’s virtual forum, themed Meeting the interests of government, consumers and telecoms companies in the era of Covid-19 and post COVID-19 pandemic for digital economy development’on Thursday.
Danbatta announced that it had revised the determination on the USSD in order to protect the interests of consumers and support a robust telecommunications sector.
The EVC noted that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, had already been briefed on the development with a view to ensuring a quick settlement of the debt.

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This episode is sponsored by
· Afrolit Podcast: Hosted by Ekua PM, Afrolit shares the stories of multi-faceted Africans one episode at a time. https://open.spotify.com/show/2nJxiiYRyfMQlDEXXpzlZS?si=mmgODX3NQ-yfQvR0JRH-WA

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The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria on Thursday has voiced their disapproval to the deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector when the country is still relying on imports for refined products.
The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency had yet to issue its guiding retail petrol price for the month of Thursday, leaving operators confused.
The PPPRA had earlier said it would advise the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and oil marketing companies on the monthly guiding retail price at which the product shall be sold across the country.

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This episode is sponsored by
· Afrolit Podcast: Hosted by Ekua PM, Afrolit shares the stories of multi-faceted Africans one episode at a time. https://open.spotify.com/show/2nJxiiYRyfMQlDEXXpzlZS?si=mmgODX3NQ-yfQvR0JRH-WA

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The Federal Government has begun the process of restarting international flights.
the PTF National Coordinator, Sani Aliyu during a briefing on Thursday by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, said approvals have been given for aviation authorities to commence the process for the resumption of international flights.
Mr. Aliyu said the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and other aviation agencies, as well as airlines, are to come up with a safe process through which international airlines can commence operations.
The PTF Coordinator said when international flight operations resume, passengers would arrive three hours before flights, to ensure that there is no crowding of the airports.

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