Tag: africa

Business forum in Senegal promotes African female entrepreneurs

Posted by khaoula on

Africa has the highest number of women entrepreneurs but they face more hurdles on the way to business success than their male counterparts.

Maty Ndiaye a Senegalese businesswoman founded Kaya, a shop in Dakar selling clothes, toys and products for children.

But the business stalled when she needed funding to grow and Ndiaye was forced to shut down her store due to lack of capital.

Like many entrepreneurs on the continent, access to resources and opportunities are limited, and even more so for women.

“I wanted to borrow 5 million with a micro financing body and they asked me to bring the 5 million, to put it in an account as a guarantee and afterwards they would lend me 5 million. I found that outrageous. So, it’s really hard when we want to develop our business and we need money to inject in the business, it’s really hard to get access to that type of financing,” she said.

 

However, a new networking initiative founded by French businesswoman, Aude De Thui is determined to change that.

Women In Africa (WIA) is an organisation that aims to support and fund businesses led or managed by African women.

The group recently held its first regional Summit in Dakar, bringing together over 180 women entrepreneurs from 15 different countries.

WIA recently held a Women’s Forum in Senegal, with specific focus on the challenges and solutions faced by African female entrepreneurs like Ndiaye.

“Women suffer today because they don’t get enough support, enough guardiancies and they don’t have access to financing. And women forums are often about well-being or personal themes. I participate in economic summits because I want to put women back in the economy and give them a voice because they inspire trust and also because the world needs to focus on Africa,” De Thuy said.

Speakers and experts were also on hand to give master classes and share their business experiences, as well as putting women in touch with investors and helping them pitch their ideas.

“By participating in this forum, it has allowed me to believe in myself more but in particular to believe in the woman that I can become, like these women leaders that I have met and with whom I took a lot of pleasure talking to and exchanging with,” said 17-year-old Fatou Khouleh Wade, who dreams of being a railroad engineer.

Ndiaye says the forum helped her find at least five new clients. More importantly she found out about funding sources she was unaware of before the forum.

She said she hopes to invest new money and inject new energy into her business so that she can re-open the shop and grow.

Source: Michael Ike Dibie with Reuters

 

Fidelity Bank Plans to List on Ghana Stock Exchange by 2020

Posted by khaoula on

Fidelity Bank Ltd., a closely held Ghanaian lender, plans to list its shares for trading on the country’s bourse by 2020 as it targets a spot among the largest three banks in the West African nation.

Shareholders of the country’s fourth-largest lender on Friday approved a proposal to raise 70 million cedis ($16 million) by selling stock to selected investors, Managing Director Jim Baiden said in an interview in Accra, the capital. Fidelity will also transfer 20 million cedis of its surplus income to boost its capital buffers, he said.

 

 

The Bank of Ghana in September raised the minimum capital level for the country’s lenders to 400 million cedis, from 120 million cedis, and gave the country’s institutions until the end of the year to meet the goal. The new rules have spurred a flurry of capital-raising efforts, with Energy Commercial Bank Ltd. seeking to raise about 330 million cedis through an initial public offering, Societe Generale Ghana Ltd. planning a 170 million cedis-rights issue, and Universal Merchant Bank Ltd. in talks with investors for 260 million cedis.

Source: http://www.africanbusinesscentral.com/

 

Nigeria: France-based shipping group signs agreement to operate a container terminal in Lekki, Lagos

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Lekki Port LFTZ Enterprise (LPLE), the promoters of Lekki Deep Seaport, recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with CMA CGM Group, a France-based world leader in maritime transport, to operate the seaport of the future container terminal in the port. This deal is CMA CGM’s second shipping company in Nigeria and on the African market.

CMA CGM, through its subsidiary CMA Terminals, will be responsible for marketing, operations, and maintenance of the container terminal at Lekki Deep Sea Port. Upon completion, the container terminal will be equipped with a 1,200-meter-long quay as well as 13 quay cranes and will have a capacity of 2.5 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs). With its 16-meter depth, it will allow the Group to deploy ships with a capacity of up to 14,000 TEUs. The port which is expected to start operation at the end of 2020 will have 2 container berths and will be Nigeria’s first deep-sea port.

“We are pleased to sign this Memorandum of Agreement with LPLE to operate Lekki Port’s container terminal,” said Farid Salem, Executive Officer of the CMA CGM Group. “As Nigeria’s first deep-sea port, Lekki Port represents a strategic choice for the CMA CGM Group. Thanks to its position and capacity, Lekki Port will allow us to bring to Nigeria larger container ships from Europe and Asia to better serve our customers and pursue our commitment to the development of the entire region. With CMA CGM’s unique service offering and expertise combined with our logistics and inland services, our presence in Lekki Port will benefit the entire Nigerian supply chain and market as well as neighboring countries.”

This port is expected to help reduce congestion in the Lagos port, which is fully in line with the CMA CGM Group’s development in the region. This terminal will also serve as a transshipment hub to Nigeria’s neighboring countries, most especially Benin.

During the official flag off ceremony of the Lekki port project recently the Federal Government of Nigeria pledged its total support for the project. This was made known by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo who represented President Muhammadu Buhari.

“The signing of the agreement with the CMA CGM Group as another step in the right direction towards the actualization of the Port, which would become the deepest port in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Navin Nahata, Chief Executive Officer of Lekki Port LFTZ Enterprise.

The future Lekki Deep Sea Port will be developed, built and operated by LPLE, a joint venture enterprise led by the Tolaram Group, the Lagos State Government and the Nigerian Ports Authority.

 

Source: The Nerve http://thenerveafrica.com/

 

IMF calls for East African interbank loan market

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended the formation of a cross-border bank-to-bank lending market, secured through physical surrender of collateral across eastern Africa. The IMF said a secured interbank market would be a true repo (repurchasing agreement) market as the region lacks such facility between banks.

Small financiers are the most affected by the lack of a regional market for banks to lend and borrow from each other overnight, as they have to pay a hefty premium to get emergency funds from regulators or larger rivals. IMF reckons banks could lend each other regardless of the location of the borrower in the region, especially as the countries race to set up structures for a monetary union in the next five years.

“A true repo market will be the safest way of integrating EAC money markets. The concept of a true sale is more uniformly understood (which) therefore makes cross-border trading easier. “So, for example, a Kenyan bank is likely to feel much safer lending to a Ugandan counterparty if it receives outright legal title to Ugandan collateral,” said the IMF.

Not vibrant

The multilateral lender notes that in Uganda, for example, the repo market is not vibrant and does not match the international standards.

For one, the market does not use the standard documentation such as the global master repurchase agreement (GRMA), which sets out the guidelines of how the trading is to be done legally. Tanzania is also in the process of adopting the GMRA, which Kenya adopted it in 2008 to pave the way for the horizontal repo.

The repo is supposed to redistribute liquidity in the banking sector with government securities serving as the collateral. Though used in Kenya, it is still not very popular nor widely used across the region as the monetary union is not yet in place. The Kenyan GMRA is also domestically oriented, rather than regional.

Horizontal repo

The IMF advises Uganda to adopt the GMRA as the basis for the horizontal repo market. “A true repo market will depend on a robust Master Repo Agreement (MRA).

There is no Master Repo Agreement in Uganda. Uganda does need to draft one from scratch; there are plenty of MRAs available across the markets that can be used as examples for Uganda and tailored as needed,” says the IMF. With regard to Tanzania, the IMF says such an agreement (GMRA) is a prelude to the adoption of a new monetary framework that uses interest rates as the anchor.

Source: https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/

Wangari Maathai: the African woman Nobel Prize Winner

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The African Chamber of Commerce is celebrating the International Woman Day commemorating African women who changed the world we live in a better place.

This year we are united to honour Dr. Wangari Maathai who became the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize for her work demonstrating the intricate links between the environment, democracy and peace through Kenya’s Green Belt Movement.

As many girls in Kenya, the young Wangari was taught to respect nature. She grew up loving the lands, plants, and animals that surrounded her from the giant mugumo trees to the tiny tadpoles that swam in the river. Although most Kenyan girls were not educated, Wangari, curious and hardworking, was allowed to go to school. She excelled at science and went on to study in the United States. After returning home Dr. Maathai used with devotion her knowledge and compassion to promote the rights of the Kenyan women and to help save the land and the trees of her country. In 1997 Dr. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights and since its foundation an estimated 45 million trees were planted around Kenya.

What made the Green Belt Movement remarkable was that it was also conceived as a source of employment in rural areas, and mostly a way to empower women who in their ordinary daily life they normally came second to men in terms of power, education and much else because of the cultural and social structure of many African countries.

Dr. Maathai was awarded in 2004 of the Nobel Peace Prize  that  for the the first time it had gone to an African woman. She was an elected member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. Unfortunately, in 2011 Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.

Boosting women’s potential as “green agents of change” is necessary to realize the full potential of investments in conservation in African countries and around the world.  Today we all stand together in memory of Maathai.

 

 

Tap from the pool of young African professionals

Posted by jilles on

When the development of Africa is discussed, most stakeholders often focus more on finances and may be logistics. Human resources are usually overlooked. The few who do think about human resources show little attention to the vast and ever-growing pool of young African professionals based both in and out of the continent. Companies carrying out projects in various industries across the continent have until now depended largely on non-African professionals. The most common flimsy excuse for not using African professionals even in projects for Africa is that, it is hard to find qualified and experienced Africans to do the job. Paradoxically, African countries like Congo (Brazzaville) experienced an unemployment rate of up to 66.9% in recent years and over 20 other African countries have experienced an unemployment rate of between 20 to 40% from 2012 to 2016 according to TradingEconomics.com .
Many platforms uniting African professionals exist. Their common goals are to profile, categorize and orientate these experts towards areas where maximum use of their expertise is in need. One such platform is The African Chamber of Commerce (AFCHAM). Inspired by demands for African professionals by foreign companies investing in Africa, the organization now has a project called the AFCHAM-HR Directory. It is a rich pool of African professionals in any industry you can think of and most of them are all available to start work ASAP as long as the working conditions are right.
Hiring from the AFCHAM-HR Directory is advantageous in the fact that most of the ground work like general background check and preliminary basic skills evaluation are guaranteed and endorsed by AFCHAM, making it easy for the recruiter to focus more on skills related to the particular position in mind. All professionals listed in the program have been checked by AFCHAM officials although this is not an ultimate guarantee that the recruit will satisfy the needs of the employer. Companies or individuals interested in using the AFCHAM-HR Directory service simply have to submit their requests to AFCHAM at hr@afcham-china.org and the department will get in touch for further discussions regarding their needs. It is worth noting that companies in need of African professionals are not necessarily companies based in Africa. Many companies based in other countries need African professionals for other reasons related to their businesses.
African university graduates and working professionals aiming at greater heights in their careers are invited to join this program and get listed as soon as possible before the pool gets flooded. Submit your CVs and portfolios to AFCHAM at cv@afcham-china.org and the department will be in touch to evaluate your skills, career interests before getting you listed. African professionals who are already registered members of AFCHAM enjoy more privileges in this program such as advice on CV writing and interview coaching.
The future of the African continent is in the hands of young African professionals who currently form about 65% of Africa’s population. The African Union in its program dubbed Aspirations for 2063 puts it in the following words: “The aspirations reflect our desire for shared prosperity and well-being, for unity and integration, for a continent of free citizens and expanded horizons, where the full potential of women and youth, boys and girls are realized, and with freedom from fear, disease and want”. The time is now.

D. Nkwetato