Content: Financial Times Articles

  For investors hoping that South Africa might be over the worst of its damaging economic and political impasse, the court summons issued yesterday morning to finance minister Pravin Gordhan came as a rude awakening. “They know who my lawyer is,” was Mr Gordhan’s characteristically sangfroid response to the summons by the anti­corruption Hawks unit […]

African countries must begin a manufacturing renaissance to take over from China as that country’s labour costs rise, and unleash investments in food and farming to secure the continent’s future growth, the head of the African Development Bank has warned. “With wages rising in China, Africa needs to create manufacturing,” Akinwumi Adesina, president of the […]

Sub-Saharan Africa is in danger of sinking back into the level of indebtedness that led the west to write off tens of billions of dollars worth of borrowing earlier this century. Between 2000 and 2011, the median ratio of general government debt to gross domestic product of 18 major sub-Saharan countries fell from 80 per […]

As Paul Onditi prepared to move his family back to Kenya after a decade as a struggling artist in Germany, his former art school professor tried to dissuade him. “How can you leave your life here and go back?” the teacher asked. “How will you survive?” But Onditi says he was barely surviving in Europe. […]

East African nations should take advantage of their strong economic growth to attract foreign investment at time when the continent’s commodity exporters are grappling with their worst downturn in years, Kenya’s central bank governor said. Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth is forecast to slide to 1.6 per cent this year – its lowest level in almost two […]

Black Rhino, the African infrastructure investor owned by US private equity group Blackstone, has made its first $300m investment in a strategically important fuel pipeline between Ethiopia and Djibouti. The deal, which is one of the most high-profile US investments in the region, is the first phase of the planned $1.6bn Horn of Africa pipeline, […]

Two events in the indefatigable city of Lagos have given young entrepreneurs cause to swing between celebration and despair in a matter of days. The former came with Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise appearance in the city during his inaugural visit to Africa. The Facebook chief executive delivered an endorsement of Nigeria’s prospects as a centre of […]

An overhaul of Angola’s energy sector poses a test for Trafigura’s close-knit relationship with the west African country, as the Opec member restricts spending and forges ties with rival trading houses during the prolonged oil slump. In the past year energy bankers say Angola’s cash-strapped state oil company, Sonangol, shunned a $500m fundraising at Puma […]

Visa has partnered with four banks in Kenya to launch a mobile phone payments platform that will mount the first credible challenge to the country’s dominant Mpesa system. The mVisa service allows people to send money to each other’s accounts without first loading a digital wallet, as well as pay for goods and services without […]

The “Africa Rising” narrative gained momentum around 2010. As is the way with these things, it arrived about a decade late – and just as things were about to go pear-shaped. Investors, hungry for yield, alighted on the only continent where living standards had not yet visibly begun to converge on those in the west. […]