Category: Week in Review
Week in Review: Crime, COVID and Cables
The Facebook-led 2Africa undersea data cable initiative announced that it will add three more countries to its list of landing sites across Africa. Seychelles, Comoros, and Angola will all be connected to the billion-dollar, 37,000-kilometer cable that will connect Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. In what is ...
Week in Review: Ore, Oil & Oranges
China's major oil suppliers in Africa and the Middle East are bracing for a downturn in prices after Beijing ordered the country's largest refiner, Sinopec, to scale back operations. Sinopec will reportedly reduce refining of road and aviation fuels by up to 10% in response to the slowdown ...
Week in Review: Pangolins, Power and Payments
Nigerian customs authorities at the port of Lekki sized a record 7.1 tons of pangolin scales on Wednesday and arrested three suspects. A fourth, believed to be the smuggling kingpin is still at large. The endangered pangolin is now the most hunted mammal on earth and a seizure ...
Week in Review: Shipping, Share Prices and Strikes
Islamic militants released two Mauritanians kidnapped earlier this month in Mali but there's no word on the three Chinese construction workers who were abducted in the same raid. The militants provided no explanation for Wednesday's release or any other information on the ...
Week in Review: Trade, Tilapia and Transmission Lines
Wycliffe Oparanya, governor of Kenya's Kakamega County, opened a new $120 million EU-financed fish processing factory that is intended to help Kenya reduce its dependence on imported Chinese tilapia and increase exports to Europe. Local fishers have long complained that low-cost Chinese imports, which they claim are also ...
Week in Review: Minerals, Mayhem and Mediation
With most strategic mineral exports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo shipped to China through the port of Durban in South Africa, the recent closure of the N3 highway that connects the port to Johannesburg presents a potentially costly disruption to vital supply chains. Authorities were forced ...
The Week in Review: Kidnapping in Nigeria, Crime in Kenya and Construction in the Congo
A Swedish pension fund with almost $90 billion under management divested its shares in the Chinese state-owned Power Construction Corporation due to "violations of environmental norms" in Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve. The firm, A7, also dropped Huaneng Power International for expanding its coal power operations. The company ...