African PE (Private equity) firms raised less than $20bn in the decade to 2018, equivalent to just 2.5 per cent of the capital raised by the world’s emerging markets, according to a Preqin report. Moreover, most of that African capital was invested into the relatively advanced economies of South Africa and North Africa, with very […]
Category Archives: Main
By Morne van der Merwe, Managing Partner, and Wildu du Plessis, Head of Africa, Baker McKenzie Johannesburg The Coronavirus (COVID-19) has resulted in mass production shutdowns and supply chain disruptions due to port closures in China, causing global ripple effects across all economic sectors in a rare “twin supply-demand shock”. With South Africa having just […]
Fintech, Kenya News, Main, Nigeria News, South Africa News
How fintechs are making Africa a leading global Innovation Hub
In a continent where over 60% of the adult population is unbanked and the financial sector is considerably underdeveloped, fintech has been a welcomed revolution that is seen to be boosting Africa’s financial infrastructure. With a growing population, an increasing rate of mobile and internet penetration, combined with a substantial need for financial inclusion, Africa […]
It is quite phenomenal how in recent years, both ecommerce players and retailers have used Black Friday to sweep thrifty shoppers off their feet. So much that the shopping event is no longer restricted to a single-day shopping spree but has rather taken over the entire month to become Black November. If you drove around […]
Strategies to share talent between Africa and France By Kiné Seck Mercier A young woman spends her youth in Nigeria, leaving to attend a university in London. She goes on to work in the United States, Ghana, South America, Kenya and Zambia, finally settling in Paris. In many ways, she is illustrating an increasingly common […]
By Morne van der Merwe, Managing Partner and Head of the Corporate/M&A Practice, Baker McKenzie Johannesburg Countries in Africa are preparing for the reality that a hard Brexit could lead to increased risk aversion and reduced investor appetite for trade in the region. Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), said recently that […]
By Josephine Wawira The rise and growth of e-commerce in the world and primarily in Africa has created a lot of business opportunities, not only in urban but also in rural areas. The good news is that there is undoubtedly increased connectivity, reaching even the previously inaccessible remote villages across the continent and connecting them […]
If you do business globally as a multinational company, employee or consultant, you might wish to follow the convoluted U.S. legal case against Lebanese ship salesman Jean Boustani. Boustani was the chief sales executive of a global shipbuilding company, Privinvest, based in the Middle East with operating shipyards in France, Germany and elsewhere. Privinvest has […]
Interviews with global business leaders. Join Mark Willis, Chief Executive Officer, Middle East & Africa, Accor at #AHIF from 23-25 September 2019, Addis, Ethiopia. He will be speaking at our regional leader’s panel to discuss Accor’s growth strategies in Africa, having 143 hotels across the continent and another 60+ to open in the next 36 […]
Digital economy in Africa is snowballing, and in the process it’s creating new jobs and opportunities for digital entrepreneurs to explore a larger web market. Though e-commerce represents only 0.6% of all the transactions done in Africa, as compared to 12% in the USA and 20% in China; the budding nature of the industry does […]
Key to enabling African economies to make the most of their opportunities is developing infrastructure in the region. Across the continent, new laws are being implemented and alternative sources of infrastructure funding are being sought in order to kick-start direly needed infrastructure projects. At the centre of it all is China, which is providing alternative […]
By Morne van der Merwe, Managing Partner, and Wildu du Plessis, Head of Africa at global law firm Baker McKenzie in Johannesburg Ahead of the Baker McKenzie African Transactional Summit taking place in Johannesburg in May 2019, Baker McKenzie lawyers based in Africa, alongside the Firm’s global Africa specialists, as well as lawyers from our […]
An updated assessment by a United Nations Environment Programme-administered treaty has confirmed that poaching continues to threaten the long-term survival of the African elephant. Based on the Proportion of Illegally Killed Elephants data, or PIKE, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has evaluated the levels of illegal […]
AviaDev, Africa’s premier event dedicated to developing connectivity to, from and within the African continent, in conjunction with partners, MIDAS Aviation and Futureneers Advisors have estimated the potential revenue from new African aviation routes could yield USD $29bn in direct revenue. This revenue, which is more than the individual GDP’s of 70% of the countries […]
The recent redevelopment and upgrading of Kenya’s Mombasa – Nairobi railway line has revealed a market for faster, affordable intercity passenger transportation services between African cities. Following the recent tragedy of Ethiopian Airlines, the African passenger transportation market might be ready to consider an alternative technology capable of providing affordable, fast travel between several pairs […]
Agriculture, Main, Mali News, Nigeria News, Senegal News, Zambia News
Tapping into Digital Technology Platforms to Increase Agriculture Productivity in Africa
by Johan Burger Introduction Africa is a bit of an anomaly as far as agriculture is concerned. On the one hand, it has 65% of the world’s available uncultivated arable land, and it has the potential to feed the world. However, a country such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has the […]
Egypt News, Energy, Eritrea News, Ethiopia News, Ghana News, Green Energy, Kenya News, Main, Namibia News, Nigeria News, Republic of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Rwanda News, Somalia News, South Africa News, South Sudan, Togo News, Zimbabwe News
Trends and Events in Africa 2018
by Johan Burger 2018 has been an interesting year for Africa, with various events and trends becoming visible. 2016 saw the effects of the slowdown of China’s economic growth due to its rebalancing of its economy and the end of the commodity price super cycle. 2017 brought some relief. In Africa, 2018 demonstrated a number […]
Business, Ethiopia News, Kenya News, Main, Rwanda News, South Africa News, Uganda News
Friday@Noon on Manufacturing in Africa: 2018
by Johan Burger The NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies publishes a weekly newsletter on issues relevant to Africa. This paper is based on issues addressed in the newsletter. Manufacturing in Africa Manufacturing and industrialisation are the current buzzwords for transforming Africa’s economies. In order to reduce any dependence on the extraction and sale of raw […]
Angola News, Botswana News, Kenya News, Main, Nigeria News, Rwanda News, South Africa News, Zambia News
Friday@Noon on Economic Development in Africa: 2018
by Johan Burger The NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies publishes a weekly newsletter on issues relevant to Africa. This paper is based on issues addressed in the newsletter. The year 2018 saw numerous cases of economic development on the African continent. This would include trade, etc. Africa The US$2 trillion-plus Sub-Saharan Africa economy continues to […]
by Johan Burger The NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies publishes a weekly newsletter on issues relevant to Africa. This paper is based on issues addressed in the newsletter. Africa has been the recipient of foreign investment form a variety of foreign countries. In addition to the normal investors such as China, Japan, India, etc., we […]
by Johan Burger The NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies publishes a weekly newsletter on issues relevant to Africa. This paper is based on issues addressed in the newsletter. The financial services industry in Africa has seen a lot of development throughout the past few years, as was the case in 2018. Mobile telephony has driven […]
Djibouti News, Eritrea News, Ethiopia News, Main, Somalia News, Sudan News
Friday@Noon on the Horn of Africa: 2018
by Johan Burger The NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies publishes a weekly newsletter on issues relevant to Africa. This paper is based on issues addressed in the newsletter. The Horn of Africa has increasingly become the scene of activity, driven not only by players in the region, but also from abroad. For the purposes of […]