The eagerly awaited African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), formally under way in January 2021, sets out to boost intra-African trade for goods, services, investment, and intellectual property. At the same time, the impact of rapidly accelerating digital transformation across key sectors such as agriculture, finance and healthcare necessitates a holistic and digitally driven approach […]
South-south economic, political and security ties between the Middle East and Africa are growing rapidly, bringing ever-greater opportunities for financial collaboration between banks, non-bank financial institutions and bilateral government relationships. Also improving is country risk. Africa’s country risk ratings deteriorated significantly during the pandemic, with around 80% of nations in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) placed in […]
The here and now Needless to say, we live in interesting times, the evidence is all around us. Kids at home, no daily commutes to work and the odd glance at other shoppers as we all try to keep our distance. The same goes for work, with the status quo of how ‘business is done’ […]
The need to mitigate supply chain disruption risks: The case for Trade Disruption Insurance There has been a large influx of speciality trade finance funds over recent years in an effort to mitigate the tremendous trade finance deficits across emerging markets and in particular Africa. This widening gap, in part caused by the global banking […]
Over the last couple of decades, Mauritius has diversified, moving from a mono-crop sugar industry to a multi-sectoral economy. After the emergence of financial services in the early 90s, fintech has become a key next pillar on which the authorities and key players are now focusing. In its essence, Fintech is the technology applied to […]
The Mauritius International Financial Centre (IFC) has come to be recognised as a trusted, global financial services platform. Highly rated by the likes of the OECD and World Bank as a compliant jurisdiction that adheres to international norms and best practices, the Mauritius IFC has an innovative and robust regulatory regime. This has helped it […]
We spoke with our members Cresco Project Finance to understand the opportunities in Captive Power Solutions across Africa. Rob Futter, Director, provides insights into energy tariff variations, which markets are seeing the most interest and a 6-step Buyers approach to procuring captive power. Orbitt: So what is ‘Captive Power’? Rob Futter: Captive Power is the […]
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) entered into force on 30 May 2019 after receiving approval from 54 out of the 55 African Union member states. The agreement, making Africa the largest global trading bloc since the establishment of the WTO in 1994, aims to boost intra-African trade, reduce dependency on foreign markets, and […]
Several reasons explain why SMEs in Ghana and West Africa struggle to raise funding to finance their growth: many entrepreneurs have limited knowledge of fundraising options available to them and don’t know how to “sell” their investment opportunity to potential investors. Also, they are perceived as riskier than larger companies and have limited access to […]
Technological innovation has swept across Africa in the past decade. There are almost one billion cell phone subscriptions on the continent, up from 129 million ten years ago. In addition, software advances have disrupted the way people from Senegal to South Africa live their daily lives—from traffic support to remittance technology to agricultural assistance. The […]
