Section
Markets, trade, deals and the entrepreneurs building Africa's next economy.
Petrol prices continue to worry families and motorists in Nigeria as transport costs put pressure on household budgets. In Abuja, the Nigerian capital, petrol prices remain a key concern for consumers hoping for lasting relief.
The Cartier owner is in talks to join a consortium led by a former De Beers chief. Botswana, which owns 15%, has the right of first refusal.
After Nigeria and Ghana, the festival comes to New Cairo from 6 to 8 November, with more than 200 investors and entrepreneurs from 70 countries.
From Angola's oil assets to Senegal's gas, Cape Town's energy conference has produced billions in deals. Participants say the resources must also build industries and employment.
The trainees, backed by the EU and IOM, leave with the tools to start businesses in the trades they learned.
Three in four working women in sub-Saharan Africa work in farming and food. In Enugu, solar cold rooms and greenhouses are being built for 500 young farmers, most of them women.
They are almost every small firm in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, but far fewer of the large ones. A study by two development financiers sets out how to close the gap.
The continent buys in 70 to 80% of the medicines it uses and up to 95% of their ingredients. Twenty years after the AU's manufacturing plan, the push for a home-grown industry is back.
PRASA has added 17 long-distance coaches with lane assistance and stability systems, and plans 78 more by 2030.
Prices rose 14.63% in the year to September, down from 20.98% a year earlier. Food prices fell month on month, and the naira firmed to ₦1,333 to the dollar.
After Kenya, Botswana and Ethiopia, the $1.6bn refinery IPO is heading to the Egyptian Exchange. The offer now closes on 27 October.
Diesel is up 4.5% and kerosene also costs more. Matatu operators warn fares will follow.
Access, Zenith, UBA, GTCO, First HoldCo and others move to a positive outlook after Nigeria's own outlook improved. Their ratings stay at B.
At Wuse Market in Abuja’s Wuse district, customers are complaining bitterly about rising food prices, with one onion reportedly selling for as much as ₦500. Traders say families are struggling to afford basic food items, as the same amount of money now buys far less than before.
Work on bridges over the Hennops River and on the R511 and R514 will repair rails, joints and concrete and widen some approaches.
Phase II of Vedanta's Gamsberg operation at Aggeneys lifts output to about 500,000 tonnes of zinc a year and is expected to sustain up to 1,000 jobs, most of them local.
Under the theme Innovate Today, Nourish Tomorrow, the national celebration at Tosca Village on 16 October will launch food security projects in a province where parts face food insecurity.
With a World Bank fisheries project more than 80% spent, Liberia's fisheries authority says the next step is private investment that keeps the sector's value at home.
The Abia Industrial Innovation Park at Owaza has a new managing director, and Governor Alex Otti says several companies want in.
Kristalina Georgieva says a $2.2bn programme is ready and Senegal's case will test whether the reformed G20 debt framework works. Dakar hopes for a first payment in November.
Egypt produces 20% of the world's dates and has planted the world's largest date farm. At the festival in Siwa, the government set out how to earn more from every harvest.
A judge lifted an order that had frozen the site after finding the petitioners had cited the wrong plot of land. The case returns to court on 24 November.
Ethiopia, Angola, Sudan, Egypt and Zambia top a ranking of the continent's lowest household power prices. Nigeria is sixth, at about a quarter of the African average.
The Amreya dry port, Egypt's second, lets cargo be handled away from the quays. Thirty-three more are planned.
The units, in 11 industrial complexes across 10 governorates, come with utilities and can be bought or rented online from 15 to 29 October.
Djibouti offers access to the Horn's markets from the mouth of the Red Sea; Egypt offers medicines, fertilisers, food and engineering goods.
Finance Minister Ahmed Kouchouk told investors in Bangkok that the private sector now accounts for 65% of investment and the economy is growing at 5.1%.
From a Lagos rail line to a fertiliser plant and a data centre powered by flare gas, the portfolio presented in Bangkok could create about 367,000 jobs, the government says.
A Central Bank of Liberia team visited Nigeria's insurance regulator after 50 Nigerian insurers raised about N720 billion in new capital.
Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille received a global award in Malta for bringing government and business together to grow the industry.
The fund sees 4.3% growth next year, but says rising prices are hurting households and calls for targeted cash support.
The African Union has begun a mid-term check on 69 regional infrastructure schemes. The question it wants answered: why are so many stuck?
The canal says 166 large container ships crossed between July and September, against 16 in the same months last year.
The projects, in the countries of the southern basin, cover hydropower, power lines and water supply. Cairo has also opened a $100 million fund of its own.
Bikita Minerals says a $400 million lithium sulphate plant will be finished in 2027, as Zimbabwe pushes to sell finished products instead of raw ore.
The 861-kilometre line from Sishen to Saldanha is getting new rails, sleepers and signalling, as the state prepares to let private operators run trains on it.
The foreign minister says Africa wants European capital and technology to process its own minerals, and warns that the EU's carbon tax could cost the continent $25bn.
Nine-month revenue more than doubled to $22.5 billion as the Lekki refinery moved from start-up into full commercial running.
The families of two young Tanzanians shot dead near a mine in 2019 are suing the body that certified its gold. Thirty more Tanzanians have joined them.
The pipeline's regulator briefed the region's new infrastructure commissioner. The line was set up by Benin, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo to supply power stations.
The pipes for instant cross-border transfers now exist, a payments executive argues. What is missing is enough local currency at the other end.
The information minister says the conversion programme has drawn $2.5bn in private money. Drivers still face a high upfront cost and too few filling stations.
The sugar producer will be delisted on 3 November. With it, 2026 will have seen 13 companies leave the exchange and only two arrive.
Remittances of $47.3bn and a jump in foreign investment outweighed a trade deficit that widened by more than a quarter.
South Africa's farm exports hit a record R270 billion last year. The president says Black farmers produce about a tenth of commercial output.
Two neighbours, two very different programmes under the same name. What an Extended Credit Facility is, and why the sums differ tenfold.
Officials spent five days at four border posts with Benin and Ghana, timing the queues and asking traders and drivers what really happens.
At a town hall in Bomi County, the mines minister said the test is how much value stays in the country, and floated a gold refinery and a state mining company.
Presidents Sisi and Prabowo signed four agreements in Jakarta. Indonesia also backed Egypt's position on the Nile.
The head of the farm body AGRA says African countries have good seed laws and weak delivery, and that plans written into national budgets are the ones that happen.
The AU will run four side events at this week's IMF and World Bank meetings, on tax rules, cross-border payments, its own financial institutions and debt.
The agency kept the rating at B but says reforms to the naira and interest rates are working, and that reserves have reached $54.9 billion.
The annual rate in cities fell for September, but prices rose 1.3% in the month, led by a 15% rise in vegetables.
A day after launching the Africa Credit Rating Agency, the African Union gathered lenders in Mauritius to ask why the continent still pays more to borrow.
Three in four economies south of the Sahara have been upgraded. But prices are rising again, and income per person is growing at under 2% a year.
The Eli Adewole Foundation pairs education and business grants with mentorship and skills training. Its argument is that money alone rarely gets a young person from potential to progress.
Egypt's biggest state bank has given motorboats and gear, free, to breadwinners who could not afford a vessel of their own.
Bus operators who carry pupils for the provincial government say they are running at a loss. A one-day strike left nearly 22,000 children without transport, days before final exams.
The Law Reform Commission and the Millennium Challenge Corporation have begun reviewing the law. Legislators are pressing for stronger local content rules.
The fund's study of 76 countries lands as Nigeria argues over a petrol discount and South Africa over diesel.
The Industrial Development Corporation's funding for Black industrialists went to manufacturing and other value-adding sectors last year, the trade minister says.
The social development department calls it a saving. MPs call it a failure, in a country where 23 million people live below the poverty line.
A presidential skills programme has graduated its first 700 young people in Oyo State, with laptops, sewing machines and make-up kits to start work.
The mining minister called it a "deeply concerning regression" after last year's record low of 41 deaths.
The 38-month deal still needs approval by the fund's board. The IMF expects Niger's economy to grow by about 7% this year.
President Sisi pitched a Korean industrial zone on the Suez Canal to 23 companies in Seoul before flying on to Malaysia.
Soldiers saluted the coffin of the 43-year-old businessman, who died with his wife and four others in a helicopter crash last week. He was known for giving away cars and for his closeness to the ruling party.
At least 3,700 people have fled Yemen for Djibouti in a month, and the cost of insuring ships through the Bab el-Mandeb has nearly doubled, raising fuel and fertiliser prices across the continent.
The presidency says NNPC stations will give up their retail margin as crude passes $100 a barrel. It insists this is not the return of the subsidy.
The Gauteng High Court found the trade minister approved the rules without properly assessing them. It did not rule on whether the code itself is lawful, and sent it back to him.
Taiwo Oyedele warns that a return to the subsidy could push the naira towards ₦3,000 to the dollar. The government says it will offer targeted relief instead.
About 35,000 tonnes of nuts left the country through illegal channels, the agriculture minister says. He wants smuggling treated as a crime and the trade tracked digitally.
Europe buys more than four-fifths of Namibia's beef exports. The disease has reached 11 farms in the south since it was declared on 22 September.
On World Cotton Day, a South African industry voice argues the continent should spin, weave and sew more of what it grows, and points to one farmer's rise from four hectares to 200.
Two weeks of talks in Lilongwe ended with warm words on spending discipline and fuel pricing, and no agreement yet on the financing the country has lacked since May 2025.
The Nigerian refinery is trying to raise $1.6bn in what could be Africa's largest stock market listing. The offer closes on 13 October.
Fuel has been rationed in Gabon's capital since late September. The government calls it a temporary disruption; station managers say deliveries keep coming up short.
The African Union-backed AfCRA, based in Mauritius, is meant to offer an alternative to Fitch, Moody's and S&P — and to bring down what the continent pays to borrow.
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