Month: July 2023

A second group of the South African female footballers of the national team was set to leave South Africa on Thursday (6 July 2023) to join up with the rest of the team and continue with preparations for the final friendly match against Costa Rica on 15 July 2023 before the official start of the tournament on July 20.

This comes after the resolution of a pay dispute. The dispute caused the entire squad to sit out a game on Sunday (Jul. 02) and was an embarrassment to the South African soccer association.

After the Banyana Banyana won the AFCON last year, South African president Ramaphosa said the country should outlaw pay discrimination and embark on a programme to bridge the gender pay gap.

To end the problem ahead of the World Cup, the Motsepe Foundation gave $320,000 to be shared between the 23 players going to the Women’s World Cup, officials announced at a press conference in Johannesburg.

It is the foundation set up by African soccer president and billionaire businessman Patrice Motsepe.

After more than three weeks in the local preparation and selection camp, a first group of South African senior women’s team officially departed for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup on Wednesday evening (5 July 2023).

4 teams will represent Africa in the upcoming FIFA Women World Cup.

The 2023 FIFA’s World Cup will take place in Australia and New Zealand.

Nigeria in Group B against co-host Australia; The Republic of Ireland and Canada.

Zambia in Group C will play Spain; Costa Rica and Japan.

South Africa in Group G will go head-to-head with Sweden; Italy and Argentina.

Morocco in Group H will play Germany; Colombia and The Korea Republic.

Protestors were out in force this Friday in the Kenyan city port of Mombasa to demonstrate against a raft of controversial tax increases.

“We are tired” chanted the demonstrators as they clashed against police forces.

Kenyan president, William Ruto, signed a law last week imposing new taxes on Kenyans already suffering from a severe cost-of-living crisis.

Last Friday, the high court in Nairobi suspended the implementation of the new bill after a senator filed a case challenging its constitutional legality.

Veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Azimio alliance called for anti-government protests over the impact of the new taxes

The Democratic Republic of Congo boosted its credit rating from 5.1 to 5.5 between 2022 and 2023, according to thepan-African rating agency Bloomfield. The sub-Saharan country has one of the highest growth rates in the region.

The DRC gained 40 basis points in the space of a year which is helping to boost the nation’s economic profile.

The second edition of the Congolese Country Risk Conference took place in Kinshasa on 28 June; an event designed to attract more investment and make the DRC a lasting success.

“This is an endogenous exercise. The Democratic Republic of Congo wants it. It is an opportunity for dialogue between all the stakeholders, first and foremost the private sector” Nicolas Kazadi, the DRC’s finance minister, told Euronews.

The DRC continues to face real challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, arbitrary taxes and insecurity in the east of the country.

Since 1996, six million people have died in eastern DRC, the epicentre of ethnic tensions in the country and the fight over vital natural resources.

A climate of instability is bad news for potential investors.

In recent years, the government has stepped up reforms and placed an emphasis on:

• macroeconomic performance
• responsible management of public finances
• stabilising the financial system

These three factors are necessary to cement the country’s credibility, particularly in the eyes of private investors and to ensure that social issues, job creation and wealth creation are not relegated to a blind spot.

“Generally speaking, I would say that this is a very good thing and that these are very good initiatives. Because you can feel the government’s desire to do the right thing” said Marie Chantal Kaninda, the Chief Executive Officer of Glencore in the DRC.

Transparency is key

While the DRC has vast mineral deposits it is looking to diversify its economy. For the banks to support these ambitions for diversification and growth, they must advocate an effective and clear policy, as Gancho Kipulu Baya, the Country Head of Rawbank explained: “The major challenge is one of transparency. The challenge of traceability for exported products.

“And we, the banks, are grafting ourselves onto this market, and we also need the support of the State, which must ensure this transparency and traceability to enable us to secure adequate financing”.

Thanks to a Turkish-Congolese initiative, a new financial centre in Kinshasa will be inaugurated in December. It is part of this new value chain including five towers and a conference centre spanning 90,000 m2 which is all thanks to an investment of more than 300 million US dollars (€275 million).

It will have interconnected services that will concentrate several operations on a single site to optimise the services of the Ministry of the Budget and the Ministry of Finance. These public-private alliances are shaping the future financial and urban architecture of the Congolese capital.

“It’s going to be like a financial hub. Also a governmental hub of the DRC, in the heart of the country. But also, we got a Kinshasa airport project. The Kinshasa airport project is going to be the hub of the central African region; with an eight million passengers capacity, and one of the largest cargo terminals on the African continent” said Turhan Mildon, the Chairman of the Board, at construction giant MIlvest.

“Besides that, I can mention the Arena Project; a sports facilities that we are building here. We are advancing Congolese workers here in the country. Also, we have an academy, that we established here, to educate the Congolese. So these investments will add value to the country, and will also add value to the business environment of the country as well”.

But challenges remain. With more than 80 million hectares of fertile land and favourable conditions for year-round farming, the country’s production is too low. Over 80% of consumer food products are imported.

But, Safia Ibrahim-Netter, the Director of the French Development Agency, DRC explained that optimising the agricultural policy will enable the DRC to re-establish itself as a giant on the international stage.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do all this if there hadn’t been an agreement with the IMF, and for there to be an agreement with the IMF, reforms had to be implemented. So that’s how I see the DRC: not a day goes by without a French company expressing its desire to come here”.

Fuel consumption has fallen in Nigeria since President Bola Tinubu removed costly subsidies.

This is according to figures released to the Reuters news agency by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority.

The average daily petrol consumption reportedly reached 48.43 million litres in June, down from the previous average of 66.9 million.

The end of subsidies has caused fuel prices to nearly triple, leading to a rise in transport costs and higher food and electricity prices for many Nigerians using petrol generators.

Business may soon be impacted.

The Stanbic IBTC’s latest Purchasing Power Index links the subsidy scrap to a marginal decline in business confidence in June 2023 as inflationary pressures surged.

Respondents said issues around the ending of the fuel subsidy acted to limit the pace of output growth, although activity was still up markedly in the latest survey period.

For decades, Nigeria’s low-cost gasoline has been transported illegally by road to its neighbours, primarily Benin, where it is resold on the black market by a multitude of informal sellers.

The scale of the trafficking is such that the price of taxi fares has almost doubled in Cotonou (Benin). In Cameroon, another neighbour of Nigeria, several motorcycle taxi unions have gone on strike in protest.

Elected in February in a disputed election, Bola Tinubu announced as soon as he took office on 29 May the end of fuel subsidies, which were costing the state billions of euros and forcing it to borrow massively to keep petrol prices artificially low.

“I have painfully asked you, my compatriots, to sacrifice a little more for the survival of our country. For your trust and faith in us, I assure you that your sacrifice will not be in vain,” he said in an address on June 12.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) held the opening session of a two day meeting in Vienna on Wednesday.

Guests and speakers included Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud, the Minister of Energy, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the ministers of oil and gas from Iraq and Libya, and the UAE minister of energy and infrastructure, among others.

The 8th OPEC Conference is being held under the title Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Energy Transition.

The conference will examine the current global energy landscape and future prospects in energy transitions, market stability, energy security, investment, technology, and innovation.

This comes as Saudi Arabia announced on Monday that it was extending its oil production cut by one million barrels a day to boost flagging prices, while Russia announced that it would cut its exports by 500,000 bpd in August.

These measures are the latest to be taken by major producers to stabilize prices in the face of high market volatility, lingering fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s faltering economic recovery.

Saudi Arabia, the heavyweight of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), decided in early June to make a further production cut in the hope of boosting prices.

This voluntary reduction, which took effect this weekend, will continue into August and “may be extended” beyond that period, the kingdom’s official news agency reported, citing a source in the Energy Ministry.

“The source confirmed that this additional voluntary reduction reinforces the precautionary measures taken by OPEC+ countries with the aim of supporting the stability and balance of oil markets,” the agency added.

This decision maintains production in the oil-rich kingdom at around nine million barrels per day.

Announcing the cut last month following a meeting of oil producers, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdelaziz bin Salmane said it was potentially “extendable”.

In April, several Opec+ members had decided to voluntarily cut their production by more than a million barrels a day, a surprise decision that briefly supported prices but did not lead to a sustained rise.

The World Health Organization, WHO, described the malaria vaccine as “safe and effective” having led to “a substantial reduction in severe malaria”.

Speaking in New York, Director-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, added that the new vaccine also contributed to a fall in child deaths.

“As the first vaccine against malaria, the RTS,S vaccine has now been delivered to more than 1.6 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. It has been shown to be safe and effective, resulting in a substantial reduction in severe malaria and a fall in child deaths”, announced Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

The director for Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals also warned that despite this new “tool in the toolbox”, “its important to remember that nearly every minute a child dies of malaria”.

“I think it’s really important to remember nearly every minute a child dies of malaria, and the introduction of malaria vaccine as another tool, an additional tool in the toolbox to fight against the severe disease, the deaths that occur, is a really essential step forward”, added Katherine O’Brien, WHO Director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals.

According to previous UN studies, climate change is allowing an increase in the number of mosquitoes carrying malaria-like diseases.