Tanzania Tour Risks Whitewashing Maasai Forced Evictions
Tourism Needs to Respect Indigenous Communities’ Rights This week American tennis players – brothers John and Patrick McEnroe – are set to host a luxury tennis-themed safari tour in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), where Indigenous Maasai people are protesting the Tanzanian government’s forced eviction of them from their ancestral homes. The “Epic Tanzania Tour” […]
African Leaders are Eyeing Carbon Markets as a Source of Scarce Capital
The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), a UN-backed consortium, reckons that Africa uses just 2% of its annual carbon-credit potential; it aims for Africa to sell $100bn worth of credits a year by 2050. Even a fraction of that would be a boon for a continent where annual foreign direct investment has never surpassed $80bn. […]
The Quickening Evolution of Africa’s Data Analytics Industry
In 2021, Egyptians Nour Altaher and Omar Mansour recognised a gap in Africa’s data analytics market and founded Intella. Their startup aimed to address the underrepresentation of Arabic in speech-to-text technologies. By leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data sets, Intella set out to process the nuances of Arabic dialects, offering cloud-based solutions to […]
European Business Schools are Looking South to Africa
The continent is teeming with entrepreneurial talent, with a youthful population, rapidly urbanising economies and abundant natural resources. But many African entrepreneurs face obstacles that can hold them back, such as limited access to education, financing and mentorship. Schools based in Europe are stepping up to help bridge this gap, offering tailor-made entrepreneurship programmes and […]
Addis Receives Time-limited Liquidity Relief ahead of Discussions on a Wider Debt Treatment
Cash-strapped Ethiopia has secured a $1.5bn debt relief agreement with creditors, its central bank chief said, temporarily easing the country’s financial burden as it seeks a wider funding programme. The accord was announced on Wednesday by National Bank of Ethiopia governor Mamo Mihretu and confirmed in a statement from the Paris Club of creditor nations […]
Harare’s New Economic Plan
Zimbabwe introduced a new levy on lithium and a wealth tax to fund an almost 14-fold increase in spending aimed at bolstering economic growth that’s expected to slow next year. An annual budget presented by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube projects expenditure will rise to 58.2 trillion Zimbabwe dollars ($10 billion) in 2024, from Z$4.3 trillion […]
Ghana’s Shea Industry has a Rich History
Shea – nkuto, karite, galam in some west African languages – is deeply embedded in the culture and tradition of the country’s northern regions. It is often considered a woman’s crop – women pick the fruit and extract its “butter” – and has acquired the name “woman’s gold” because rural women earn income from its […]
An Ambitious Plan to Democratize Higher Education and Scale across Africa
In 2021, Sardana, along with his co-founders John Nguru and Shayne Aman Premji, secured $1 million for Craydel in a pre-seed round led by Enza Capital, a private venture fund that invests in early-stage tech startups across Africa. Subsequently, they secured another $1.5 million to grow the platform. Craydel – a play on the word […]
Africa’s Health Tech Landscape
During the 1990s, Africa faced considerable economic challenges that had a detrimental impact on the health status of its population. Unlike regions such as Asia and Latin America, which experienced robust growth with per capita income increasing by 2-3 per cent, Africa struggled to achieve an annual growth rate of just above 1 per cent. […]
East Africa’s Economic Landscape and the Role of Private Capital
Drawn upon data from the East Africa Venture Capital Association (EAVCA) report to understand how private capital has been instrumental in driving the growth of pioneering enterprises, reshaping industries, and charting new paths for the future in East Africa. According to the report, Kenya traditionally dominates the region’s private capital landscape, accounting for 69% of […]
