Africa Business News

The petroleum ministry on Tuesday said Egypt has discovered a gold deposit in the southeast of the country containing more than 1 million ounces.
The ministry in a statement said the deposit lies in the concession area of the Shalateen Mining Company, adding that there could be investments exceeding $1 billion over 10 years to exploit the deposit.
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Central bank data on Tuesday showed that Growth in private sector credit in South Africa in May slowed to 6.35% year on year from a revised 7.18% in April.
Expansion in the broadly defined M3 measure of money supply also slowed, to 10.26% in May from 10.47% in April.

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South Africa’s MTN is branching into the online shopping space by providing its customers with the option to pay for online purchases using mobile money payment instead of a bank card.
The spread of COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of mobile financial services, which are increasingly being recognised as a means to mitigate the use of bank notes and coins amid the pandemic.
MTN in a statement on Monday said with demand for e-commerce growing rapidly in South Africa, MTN will launch mobile money (MoMo) Pay for online shopping this week.
It has an agreement with major partners to enable over 4,000 e-commerce websites to accept MoMo and will also partner with small-medium enterprises with e-commerce channels.
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South African media and e-commerce group Naspers on Monday reported a 4.5% drop in profit for the year to March 31, mainly as a result of investments to drive growth in its food delivery business.
Core headline earnings per share (HEPS) the main profit measure in South Africa on Monday said it fell to $6.57 from $6.87 a year earlier. The company had estimated that HEPS would drop by 10-16%.
The results were announced after the stock market closed with the technology giant’s shares up 0.3%.
The South Africa-based media powerhouse, with businesses spread across Brazil, China, India, Russia and Europe, said its revenues for the full year jumped 17% to $22.1 billion, driven mainly by its food delivery and classifieds segments.
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China on Tuesday said it was concerned about India’s decision to ban Chinese mobile apps such as Bytedance’s TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat and was making checks to verify the situation.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters during a daily briefing that India has a responsibility to uphold the rights of Chinese businesses.
India on Monday banned 59, mostly Chinese, mobile apps in its strongest move yet targeting China in the online space since a border crisis erupted between the two countries this month.
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Official figures showed that the UK economy shrank more than first thought between January and March, contracting 2.2% in the joint largest fall since 1979.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revised down its previous estimate of a 2% contraction, with all the main economic sectors dropping.
The data comes as the prime minister is set for a major speech on the economy.
Deputy national statistician at the ONS, Jonathan Athow said a more detailed picture of the economy in the first quarter showed GDP shrank a little more than first estimated.
The first-quarter contraction is now the joint biggest drop since the July-to-September period in 1979.
The ONS said production output fell by a revised 1.5% in the three months, driven by declines in manufacturing as factories temporarily shut down, while there was a fall in construction output of 1.7%.
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The UK's financial watchdog has lifted restrictions on German payments company Wirecard, allowing it to resume payment activities.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) imposed restrictions on the company's UK arm after its collapse last week.
Thousands of people could not access their money or make payments through apps as a result.
The FCA said its primary objective all along has been to protect the interests and money of consumers.
Customers should now, or very shortly, be able to use their cards as usual.
the FCA's interim chief executive, Christopher Woolard told the BBC's that the FCA had imposed very strict conditions on Wirecard's UK subsidiary based in Newcastle, which had knock-on effects for about 70 payments firms.
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E-commerce giant, Amazon. Com on Monday said its Indian unit of has eliminated all single-use plastic in its packaging across fulfillment centers in the country, in line with its target to weed out the packaging material by June.
The company said in addition to replacing packaging materials such as bubble wraps and air pillows with paper cushions, it had also swapped out packaging tapes with other bio-degradable options.
Akhil Saxena, vice-president of customer fulfillment for the APAC, LATAM and Middle East and North Africa regions in an interview said they have successfully eliminated single-use plastic in all our fulfillment centers a 100%.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Monday, just days before Germany takes on the rotating presidency of the European Union with an economy mired in the worst crisis since World War II.
Berlin’s chairing of the 27-member bloc will be its last with Merkel in charge, and could be the one that defines the legacy of the leader dubbed the “eternal chancellor”.
With the future of the bloc’s relationship with Britain still to be determined, a crucial shift to a lower carbon world in the balance and crises from Libya to Syria all jostling for attention, there is no shortage of burning issues to tackle.
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The EU and Britain launch an intense five weeks of negotiations on a deal to define their post-Brexit relations on Monday, with London keen to wrap things up quickly.
The new round of talks in Brussels will be the first to be held face-to-face since the coronavirus shutdown combined with the two sides’ entrenched positions to stall progress.
The meetings will alternate weekly between Brussels and London throughout July and at the end of August, as the teams learned on Sunday, the British negotiator David Frost will be promoted to become Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s national security adviser.
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