Africa Business News

Namibian President Hage Geingob has called on Germany to reconsider its untimely decision to reject the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in the case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
He says Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.
First Lady Monica Geingos added that the absurdity of Germany, on 12 January 2024, rejecting genocide charges against Israel and warning about the 'political instrumentalisation of the charge is not lost on us.

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Nigeria is set to launch an initiative to boost broadband development and adoption in Edo, Ogun, Kwara, Katsina, Imo, Abia, Borno, and Nasarawa in the first quarter of 2024.
The office of the minister, Dr ‘Bosun Tijani, stated that individuals and communities face a growing barrier to navigating the interconnected landscape of today’s world without reliable and affordable Internet access and the resulting barriers from this limited Internet access range from economic to knowledge exchange barriers.
It highlighted that nations gain unprecedented benefits in speed, reliability, and future scaling when they build modern broadband infrastructures.

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The African Export-Import Bank and the United Bank for Africa have disbursed $2.25bn of the $3.3bn oil-for-cash loan facility arranged by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
An initial disbursement of $2.25bn has been made and a second tranche of $1.05bn is expected to be disbursed subsequently.
UBA says that the five-year facility carries a margin of 6.0 per cent per annum above the three-month secured overnight financing rate.
The NNPCL Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kolo Kyari, said that the proceeds of the facility have been made available to the federal government as one of the strategies for improving macroeconomic stability.

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A group has called on the National Assembly leadership to cut down the budget for lawmakers worried by the current economic realities in the country,
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare, specifically asked the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas to promptly reduce the National Assembly budget of N344.85 billion, to reflect the current economic realities in the country, and cut the cost of governance.
The group also wants them to request President Bola Tinubu to present a fresh supplementary appropriation bill, which reflects the reduced National Assembly budget for the approval of the National Assembly.
Oluwadare warned that the arbitrary increase by the lawmakers of their budgetary allocation, if not cut, would have significant fiscal consequences and exacerbate the country’s debt crisis.

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Thousands of Greek students rallied in Athens and other cities to protest against planned education reforms that would allow the introduction of private universities in the country.
The conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who won a second term last year, is expected to submit a bill to parliament this month that would permit private universities to operate inside Greece.
The government says the schools will operate as branches of foreign universities. Many believe the move will devalue degrees from Greece’s public universities and that the private system will exclude those who cannot afford it.

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Rishi Sunak is facing a significant rebellion from Tory MPs over legislation to revive his plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The amendments underline the scale of Tory division over the policy, which the PM has made a priority.
Ministers insist the bill allows only a vanishingly small number of appeals.
Those backing the amendments include former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and a clutch of former cabinet ministers, including former home secretary Suella Braverman.

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Global software giant SAP has agreed to pay more than $220m to settle bribery charges involving government officials around the world.
The money and gifts, typically routed via outside business consultants, were intended to help win business in South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere, according to US officials.
The schemes allegedly operated from at least December 2014 until January 2022.
SAP said it had cooperated with investigators and overhauled policies.
Subsidiaries of the firm in operating in five countries in Africa, Azerbaijan and Indonesia engaged in bribery schemes, repeatedly breaking company policies that were intended to guard against corruption.


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The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is seeking more investment in oil despite global push for renewable energy sources.
OPEC says oil remains indispensable in the renewable energy transition, projecting in its recent 2023 World Oil Outlook that the global oil demand would hit 116 million barrels a day by the year 2045.
The Secretary-General of OPEC, Haitham Al Ghais, had earlier disagreed with calls to stop investments in new oil projects, saying such calls were misguided and could lead to energy and economic chaos.
OPEC maintained that the transition to renewable energy will require a lot of steel, concrete and plastic.

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The World Bank says after lagging the pace of global growth in 2023, global trade is projected to pick up to 2.3 percent in 2024, mirroring projected growth in global output.
The World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report revealed that global trade in goods and services was virtually flat in 2023, growing by an estimated 0.2 percent—the slowest expansion outside global recessions in the past 50 years.
Goods trade contracted last year, reflecting declines in key advanced economies and deceleration in EMDEs, and mirroring the sharp slowdown in the growth of global industrial production.

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The Federal Government is set to spend N450bn on power interventions in 2024.
This is according to the budget analysis of the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company.
The Government Owned Enterprise’s expenditure intends to spend a total of N454.81bn in 2024.
N2.44bn will be spent on personnel costs, N2.36bn will be spent on other recurrent costs, N580m on general travel and transport, N15m on utilities, N110m on materials and supplies, N210.75m on general maintenance services, N34m on other services, N60m on fuel and lubricants, N40m on financial charges, N576m on miscellaneous, and N736.51m on supplementary overhead.

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