UNITED KINGDOM Archives - AfricaBusiness.com

13Sep

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

South Africa News

Local knowledge is a value differentiator in the PR world

The recently held BRICS Summit caused waves in the West when Chinese President Xi Jinping encouraged Summit participants to increase trade in their own currencies and to move away from the US Dollar. The USA downplayed this as a non-event. However, with no first-hand knowledge of the political will within the BRICS block, this stance is potentially dangerous and predominantly based on assumptions. From a Public Relations (PR) perspective, technology has opened the world up to companies. Prior to this, it would be a significant undertaking for a company to establish a presence or operate in another country. However, with the internet, a company in South Africa can establish a presence in the UK or US through a PR campaign. But is this effective? Bullion PR & Communication firmly beli...

Underwriting facility set to energise geothermal development in Kenya and Ethiopia

FSD Africa, the UK Government’s flagship financial sector programme in Africa, and Parhelion, a UK-based specialist energy and climate risk finance advisory company, have today announced plans to launch a first-of-its-kind underwriting facility, backed by East African insurers, to de-risk early-stage development of geothermal energy projects with the capacity to significantly expand electricity access and energy sector resilience in Kenya and Ethiopia. The need The energy sectors in Kenya and Ethiopia face several systemic issues: Large numbers of people continue to live without electricity — 12.5 million in Kenya and 42 million in Ethiopia are still unconnected. Growth in energy demand is outstripping supply — Kenya’s power demand is growing 20% faster than GDP, while recent a...

Deal making slows across Africa but post-pandemic opportunities look interesting

Deal making activity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) dropped in the second half of 2020 (H2 2020), when compared to the second half of 2019 (H2 2019) and year-on-year, deals were also down in both volume and value compared to 2019. As the continent gears up for post-pandemic recovery in 2021, the opportunities presented by free trade across the continent, foreign investment opportunities due to new partnerships and trade relationships, as well as the post-pandemic focus on technology, healthcare and renewable energy, will be key factors in attracting valuable mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity to the region. Further, South Africa’s deal volume and value both dropped in 2020, with the industrials and healthcare sector attracting the biggest investments. Ghana stood out as a country that...