African Business articles from April 2009

African Business archives from April 2009

White-collar crime.(The Aid Industry)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2009... In both the February and March issues of African Business you have provided details of the negative impact of the Aid industry on Africa's economies as well as its physical and ideological infrastructure. This issue requires intensified...

The Aid argument.(A dangerous strategy)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2009... I refer to your book review entitled 'Aid--the silent killer of growth' (African Business, March 2008 issue) concerning Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo. The arguments set out in Moyo's book might make perfect sense on paper but in the cold, harsh...

Botswana's progress.(A shining example)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2009... I was very impressed by your article on Botswana ('How Botswana avoided the resource curse,' African Business, February 2009 issue). The writer, Hippolyte Fofack, was refreshingly honest. The fact is that income growth in Botswana has still not...

Transport glitches remain.(2010 World Cup)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2009... It was fantastic to read that preparations for Africa's greatest sports spectacular are on track. The success of the Fifa 2010 Soccer World Cup will go a long way to finally dispel the notion that Africa lacks the forethought, organisation and...

The consequences for Africa.(A financial tsunami)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2009... There is an old saying that "it is an ill wind that blows no one any good", but I am afraid that in answer to the article 'Has Africa escaped the economic storm?' (African Business, March 2009 issue) any rational analysis would indicate the...

Mobile phone growth biggest in Africa.(Telecoms)(Survey)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... The phenomenal speed and scale of the global growth of mobile phones has been revealed in a UN report that shows usage by more than half the global population with the biggest growth taking place in Africa. And with the population of...

S Africa slips to world gold production third spot.(Resources)(South Africa)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... South Africa's gold production fell in 2008 to its lowest level in over 80 years. The sharp decrease to 220,127kg last year represented a drop of 13.6% from 2007's output, and compared to the strike-induced 218,031 produced in 1922. The...

Read the fine print.(Tech trouble)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Shark shield, an electronic device designed to repel sharks from surfers, has been withheld from the market because it failed a test off South Africa when a great white shark ate it, reports Seven Days, a Vermont US weekly. Blaming the...

Regional integration key to Africa's infrastructure development.(Infrastructure)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... The role of regional integration in reducing exorbitant infrastructure costs in Africa provides an achievable way forward for tackling Africa's mounting infrastructure backlog, an AU think-tank in Addis Ababa has found. Co-hosted by...

Africans seek UK government funding.(Diaspora)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... A UK-based development network is seeking financial help from the British government and other funding agencies for African diaspora-led groups in the economic, social and political upliftment of the African continent. The African Diaspora...

New demand for ivory alarms Kenya.(Conservation)(Report)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... A fresh demand for elephant tusks is being driven by an international agreement last year to allow a 'one-off sale' of stockpiled ivory from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Demand is strongest from Japan and China. In Kenya...

Kenya plans second bond issue.(Finance)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... A successful first infrastructure bond issue in January this year has encouraged Kenya to sell more bonds at home and abroad to fund development. "You will definitely see more bonds," says finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta. "We intend to tap...

South Africa postpones mining royalty payments.(Employment)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... The South African government has delayed by eight months the implementation of a mining royalty as a job-saving measure in the tightening economic crunch. Announcing the measure in his budget speech, finance minister Trevor Manuel (above) said...

New malaria-fighting coalition.(Health)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... A group of world leaders has committed some $3bn in an ambitious new plan to reduce malaria deaths in emerging countries to near zero by 2015. A report by the UK's Department for International Development says the commitments, made at the...

Uganda beats banana wilt.(Agriculture)(Ugandan agricultural authorities )(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Ugandan agricultural authorities and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation have claimed victory over a cooking banana plague that threatened to destroy the nation's staple crop, depended on by some 14m people. The team of...

New dawn for Africa satellite.(High Tech)(African Development Bank )(satellite project)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a loan of $25m for New Dawn, a pan-African satellite project. The loan covers the design, construction, launch and operation of a new African communications satellite. New Dawn has also raised...

Africa should not take it on the chin.(Editorial)
April 1, 2009... While most of us are trying to keep cheerful in the teeth of the economic crisis, there is no escaping the fact that Africa is hurting. Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, speaking to the Financial Times, said, quite rightly that while...

Africa's top companies 2009: plus annual regional rankings.(AFRICA'S TOP COMPANIES 2009)
April 1, 2009... A blessing in disguise? Once again its is time to assess how well Africa's top companies have performed over the year to January 2009. But statistics can often obscure the truth because in terms of market capitalisation, (i.e. the...

Low valuations hide true worth of Africa's best.(AFRICA'S TOP COMPANIES 2009)(Survey)
April 1, 2009... A cursory glance at our survey of Africa's Top Companies for 2009 may reveal little change. Many of the usual suspects feature prominently, with South African companies top of the pile and North African firms increasingly prominent. Yet take a...

Africa's top 200 companies.(African Business 2009)(Company rankings)
April 1, 2009... Rank Rank ABRI_Code Company name Country Region 2009 2008 1 1 SA-AGL Anglo American South Southern Africa Africa 2 2 SA-SAB ...

Morocco takes over top spot from Egypt.(North Africa)(Survey)(Company rankings)
April 1, 2009... As in previous years, the 2009 survey of North Africa's Top Companies presents a straightforward fight between Morocco and Egypt. While the region's other three economies, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, all have their own particular strengths,...

Nigeria still tops, but shares drop value.(West Africa)
April 1, 2009... While the telecoms industry has been the undoubted success story of the African economy over the past decade, this is not reflected in our table of the Top 50 biggest listed companies in West Africa. Top-ranked Sonatel is the industry's only...

Kenya tops, despite earlier turbulence.(Eastern Africa)(Survey)
April 1, 2009... As last year, Kenya dominates our regional survey of the Top 50 companies in East Africa with 28 of the listed companies. The country is far from overcoming the political problems caused by last January's well-documented conflict, while the...

Botswana leads but Malawi is new star.(Southern Africa)(Survey)
April 1, 2009... South Africa so completely dominates the rankings of Africa's biggest companies that it is felt useful to consider Southern Africa's largest firms that lie outside the continent's economic superpower separately. There are several areas of...

Retail edges out mining.(South Africa)
April 1, 2009... South Africa continues to dominate our survey of Africa's biggest companies, with market values far in excess of those seen in most of the rest of the continent. A staggering 15 out of the top 16 companies on the continent are South African,...

Time to forge powerful new economic bloc.(Gulf--Africa)(Conference news)
April 1, 2009... Despite ancient and intimate relations between Africa and the Arab world, the last three decades have seen a loosening of ties as each region has concentrated on its own priorities. Now, amid the rapidly changing global economic landscape,...

Africa--Gulf the fit is perfect: this is a condensed version of African Business editor Anver Versi's speech at the NYU Africa--Arab Gulf relationships conference.(Conference news)
April 1, 2009... My theme today is that the business environment is now ripe for an epoch-making expansion in trade between Africa and the Gulf states. I base this on the confluence of four converging streams: 1) Africa's growth rates; 2) the 'sudden' increase...

Investment: the importance of judicial reform: last month's article by Omari Issa on 'how to attract foreign investors' triggered so much reader interest that we have decided to run a series of articles by him on the critical issue of creating a favourable climate for foreign investment in Africa.(INVESTMENT CLIMATE)
April 1, 2009... Disputes are an unavoidable part of everyday life and inevitably spill over into the commercial world. When this happens, investors need assurances that any disagreements or conflicts will be resolved quickly, efficiently and transparently. ...

Telling it like it is, internet style: for what seems like forever, Africans have been angered by biased, stereotypical coverage of the continent in the Western media. The call has been for Africa's own BBC or Al Jazeera. But, it seems, the solution to obtaining more accurate information is already available.(LETTER FROM EAST AFRICA)
April 1, 2009... I have witnessed more than one case of a foreign correspondent representing a famous British or American publication, newly arrived here in Kenya, being snubbed by one journalist after another, as he or she sets about trying to make contacts...

African currency slide may not be a bad thing; The fallout from the global economic crisis takes all sorts of forms and shapes. Although Africa has been spared the worst of the financial meltdown trauma, its currencies have been sliding against the dollar. In some ways, this enforced depreciation may benefit Africa by boosting exports and reducing imports.(VIEW FROM THE CITY)
April 1, 2009... The severe storms battering the developed world have spread into Africa, putting at risk the progress made across this region since early 2000s. Financial contagion (i.e. the cross-border spread of the market crisis) poses the greatest risk to...

African oil and gas 2009 review.(Oil & Gas)
April 1, 2009... Between the middle and end of 2008, oil prices tumbled from nearly $150, a barrel to just around $40 today. This unexpected crash left both producing countries and the industry hastily rewriting their projections and critically reviewing their...

Sector reform is overdue.(Nigeria)(Law overview)
April 1, 2009... Abuja is once again considering the total restructuring of its oil and gas sector in an effort to boost revenues from the industry and tackle corruption. As during previous attempts to resolve the sector's many problems, the role of the state...

Algeria gears up gas supply to Europe.(Oil & Gas)
April 1, 2009... With European governments again unsettled by Gazprom's gas supply dispute with Ukraine in January, Brussels will take some comfort from Sonatrach's announcement that Algerian gas exports will increase by 25% during 2009. Almost all this...

Hi-tech solutions for crisis management.(oil & Gas)
April 1, 2009... With workers on offshore rigs and properties scattered throughout disaster-prone regions, oil and gas companies are looking to improve operations, react to emergencies quickly and ensure the safety of workers. They also need to more effectively...

Damnation for Africa's big dams? Huge, multi-billion-dollar dams are often seen as the only solution to Africa's critical shortage of power. But is this really the case? What about the massive environmental damage caused by the dams and the suffering that relocation of vast populations entails? Are dams the solution or the problem? Khadija Sharife reports.(ENERGY)
April 1, 2009... Come sunset, when Africa's primary source of energy, the sun, goes down, and students pack away their books or settle to study beside candlelight, Africa truly does become the 'dark continent." Overall, the continent contributes less than 5% of...

All that glisters is gold: in a world of tumbling commodity prices, gold and silver still hold their own as speculators shed currencies for the solidity of bullion. Can demand for these, and other precious metals, help African producers ride out the global economic storm? M J Morgan reports.(COMMODITIES)
April 1, 2009... "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a...

South Africans slow to buy tickets: the South African government is fretting over South Africans' lukewarm take-up of World Cup and this year's Confederation Cup tickets, as the financial crunch delays the rush for seats. Tom Nevin reports.(2010 WORLD CUP WATCH)
April 1, 2009... Over 500,000 World Cup tickets were snapped up in the first few days after they went on sale through the Fifa website on 20th February, but only 20% of those were bought by South Africans. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Although the sale of...

Land transfer: how to get it right: black farmers who have been resettled on formerly white-owned agricultural lands are forming unlikely but practical alliances with the former owners. The white farmers are swapping commercial-skills training for long-term leases--thus, hopefully, avoiding neighbouring Zimbabwe's dreadful land-reform fate. Tom Nevin reports.(SOUTH AFRICA)
April 1, 2009... The South African government, land owners, farming organisations and resettled farmers have watched with dismay the disintegration of Zimbabwe's farming industry and many in the sector fear a similar tragedy in South Africa's quickly rolling...

Budgeting for hard times: Ghana's 2009 budget reflects the current economic gloom hanging over the world, although the new administration led by president John Atta Mills has stuck to its campaign pledge to clean up government business and provide a million free school uniforms. Stephen Gyasi Jnr reports from Accra.(GHANA)
April 1, 2009... Presenting the budget to Parliament in March, Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffour admitted that the domestic and external state of affairs will make the year 2009 very challenging for the new National Democratic Congress...

Pirates, high costs, hammer Egypt: piracy off the Somali coast, falling demand for shipping and escalating costs mean that a number of shippers are forsaking the Suez Canal short cut and going the long way round the Cape. Tom Nevin reports.(TOPIC)
April 1, 2009... Marauding pirates off the horn of Africa are effecting changes of fortune in lands on the opposite ends of the continent. On the one hand, the Egyptian economy is taking a hammering by losing out on Suez passage revenue, while South African...

Driving Africa's growth: business visionaries and their stories.(Africa's Greatest Entrepreneurs)(Brief article)(Book review)
April 1, 2009... Africa's Greatest Entrepreneurs By Moky Makura R126 Penguin (SA) ISBN 978-0-143-024309 Africa's Greatest Entrepreneurs comprises a series of profiles on 16 of some of the most successful and dynamic business people to have emerged...

Cameroon soul: Making connections.(Blick Bassy,a singer)(Biography)
April 1, 2009... On his new album Leman, the singer, songwriter, guitarist and percussionist Blick Bassy connects the music of Central and West Africa with bossa nova, jazz and soul. Bassy's guitar playing and his intoxicating, warm voice are enriched by the...