Newscast - Africa

The Banco Angolano de Investimentos announced the sale of 972,500 own shares on the Angola Debt and Securities Exchange.
The financial institution says the sale is intended for all interested investors, subject to the terms and limits stipulated by law.
It adds that the operation will be available, from October 24 to December 30, 2022, at Intermediation Agents registered with BODIVA, in the BAI Branch Network and in Internet BAI (browser: Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, Safari, among others).
BAI is the first Angolan bank to join the stock exchange, whose share capital stands at Kz 157.545.000,000, fully subscribed and paid up, and represented by 19. 4 billion ordinary, book-entry and nominative shares.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Joe Biden say the two leaders had a productive conversation, in which air defence was top of the agenda.
Now the White House has confirmed President Biden pledged to continue providing Ukraine with the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defence systems.
Mr Biden also underscored his ongoing engagement with allies and partners "to continue imposing costs on Russia, holding Russia accountable for its war crimes and atrocities, and providing Ukraine with security, economic, and humanitarian assistance.

The UK's Ministry of Defence has given its daily update on the war in Ukraine.
It says the Kremlin's appointment of hard-line General Sergei Surovikin to lead forces in Ukraine is probably an effort to improve the delivery of the operation.
The MoD says however, he may have to contend with an increasingly factional and poorly resourced Russian defence ministry.
It's thought that General Alexandr Dvornikov did hold this role between April and August, although it's not clear how much control he held over the often disparate and competing groupings of forces.

Mexico has filed another lawsuit in the United States against US companies it says are fuelling a surge in homicides and the flow of illegal weapons into the country, the Mexican foreign minister announced.
Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard says the new lawsuit targets five US gun dealers all based in the state of Arizona that have contributed to the widespread availability of weapons in Mexico and the country’s high homicide rate.
The move comes just more than a week after a US judge dismissed a separate $10bn lawsuit Mexico filed last year against 11 US gun manufacturers.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited along with its partners could take a Final Investment Decision on the $25 billion Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline in 2023.
The 5,600-kilometer pipeline is meant to supply fuel to Europe, with the NNPC and the Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines of Morocco, signing a Memorandum of Understanding on the deal last month.
Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, assured that the project was on course and remains one of the most critical for the company.
Kyari says the project will cost $20-25 billion to build and will be constructed in phases, he anticipates the first segment would take three years to finish and the others five years.

The Financial Times reports that Spain’s Cepsa has signed a deal with the Dutch port of Rotterdam to ship green hydrogen it plans to produce in Andalusia to northern Europe, citing the oil and gas group’s chief executive.
CEO Maarten Wetselaar says Cepsa, which is diversifying into green energy, plans to take advantage of relatively cheap solar energy in Andalusia to power hydrogen production.
Wetselaar says the company would start shipping the hydrogen from Algeciras port as early as 2027 to a hub in Rotterdam, without disclosing the cost of the project.

Officials at Tunisia’s powerful UGTT labour union say the country has only enough petrol to last a week.
Energy Minister Naila Nouira has denied that the fuel shortage is down to the government’s inability to pay for supplies, insisting instead that many motorists are taking more than they need.
She added that a tanker, full of petrol, is now being unloaded which will give the country several more days' supply.

The Presidential Villa plans to spend N14.8bn on Internet access, stationery and telephone charges, among others, under the Federal Government’s planned expenditure captured in the 2023 budget.
In the budget, N67.1m was budgeted for Internet access to the Villa, while stationery and computer consumables would be N79m.
A further breakdown of the budget also showed that N35.9m was allocated for electricity charges, telephone charges and water rates each got N306.2m, N6m and N40.6m respectively.
President Muhammadu Buhari presented to a joint session of the National Assembly a budget proposal of N20.51tn for the 2023 fiscal year.
The budget is about N750bn higher than the N19.76tn earlier proposed in the 2023-2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper.

The United States added 31 Chinese companies, including memory chip maker YMTCYangtze Memory Technologies Co, to a list of firms that U.S. officials could not inspect to verify they can be trusted to responsibly handle sensitive technology exports.
The unverified list is a potential stepping stone to tougher economic blacklists from the Commerce Department.

The World Bank says the target of eradicating extreme poverty by the year 2030 is no longer feasible, arguably the chief driver of the global process has declared.
The bank blamed this on three major developments: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the climate shocks, which it described as the greatest setback in the fight against poverty since World War 2.
This revelation comes as the bank announced that it had raised the extreme poverty line to $2.15, from $1.90, where it has been.
World Bank President, David Malpass, noted that by 2015, global extreme poverty had been reduced by more than half.
He noted, however, that since then, poverty reduction has slowed in tandem with subdued global economic growth.