Kenya
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Politico: SPG Signs Kenya Trump-connected Stanton Park Group signed a $1.2M contract to represent the country’s interests in the US. I look forward to seeing what they accomplish. White House: Seventeen Nominations Sent to the Senate Today President Trump has nominated Texas real estate tycoon Ray Washburne to be President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.…
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Microsoft Announces First Public Cloud in Africa Microsoft announced today that it was going to stand up two data centers in South Africa, the first public data centers on the continent. Let that sit with you for a bit. Hopefully, this is the beginning of public clouds proliferating across the continent. The benefits of this…
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Investor Highlights African Financial Services Opportunity Despite Headwinds Kurt Davis surveys the financial services industry across Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cote d’Ivoire as ones where investors will find an upside though the current state of the industry isn’t the prettiest to look at. His projection of Cote d’Ivoire becoming the centerpiece…
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Black Market Naira Trading Cheaper Than Official Naira Nigeria’s currency situation has been a mess of late, and I’m blaming it on Billions (read my thoughts in Issue No. 24). Sure enough, hedge funds are sniffing around for a deal. This week has felt like something of a perfect storm for Nigeria with telecoms having…
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Coffee Prices Are Going to Drop 6% This Year, But My Americano Will Still Be $4 The World Bank put out its forecasts for global commodity prices last week, and it expects coffee, cocoa, and tea prices to fall 6%. Ivory Coast’s President Ouattara recently called on the country’s cocoa farmers to increase their output…
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Kenya Pushes Forward on Geothermal Plans It’s fantastic seeing Kenya continue to make progress on its Vision 2030 plan to be generating 5000MW of geothermal energy by 2030. I was rooting for these projects back in 2011, so I’m glad they’re not making me look bad. The groundbreaking for the 158MW Olkaria V geothermal site…
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Aly-Khan Satchu, one of the most respected equity investors in Kenya, discusses briefly how US-China cooperation would be a benefit to African countries. This aligns with comments Bobby Pittman, managing director of Kupanda Capital made at a session discussing the Electrify Africa Act. More on that sometime later this week. There are rumors of Anheuser-Busch…
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What a jump! That last phase looks like it hurt, but was so worth it! The world record in the triple jump is 60′. So close! That is the third time Taylor has jumped beyond 18m, equaling the number of times Jonathan Edwards – the world record holder – jumped beyond the 18m mark. He…
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1. After highlighting how problematic it is being labeled the first black woman head of South Africa’s Insurance Institute, Delphine Maidu, CEO of Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty for Africa, discussed women leadership styles, what the insurance industry could do to better serve customers, and the low insured rates in South Africa. 2. Ushahidi executive director…
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Liberty Global and Vodacom are in talks for some sort of deal. Early rumors were that the two were considering a merger, which would be one of the biggest ever, but Vodacom denies a merger being part of deliberations. What’s interesting about this news, besides John Malone continuing to take over the media world, is…
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Andreessen Horowitz just wrapped up a series on the current cyber security landscape. It got me thinking about what the cybersecurity landscape looks like in African countries. In particular, I’m interested in cybersecurity work going on at the intersection of telecommunications and banking. Nigeria has a policy of reducing the circulation of cash in the…
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United Nations climate talks end today in South Africa and the United States and China are playing chicken on who will take the lead in stewarding the environment well while also driving economic development. Quietly, Kenya has signed major deals just this year that will see the opening of at least three plants that will…
Kwame Som-Pimpong 