The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group (www.AfDB.org) has approved the Bank’s Policy on Non-sovereign Operations (NSO). The document provides the framework within which the Bank through its private sector lending window may provide financing or investment without sovereign guarantees to private and public entities that meet specific eligibility requirements on non-concessional terms.

Non-sovereign Operations (NSOs) refers to financing and investment operations that are not guaranteed by a State, covering mostly private sector transactions. They also cover non-sovereign guaranteed financing of eligible public sector enterprises, as well as financing of regional development finance institutions.

The approval of the Policy comes at a critical moment when the Bank is seeking to accelerate inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and crowd in more private sector funding for strong and inclusive growth to drive economic transformation and sustainable development in its Regional Member Countries (RMCs).

The NSO Policy will complement the Bank’s overarching 2013 Private Sector Development policy framework, notably, by defining what the Bank will do in the area of non-sovereign lending. Within this context, the objective of the Bank’s non-sovereign operations is to help accelerate the continent’s transformation through various financial support mechanisms and products including loans, lines of credit, guarantees, blended finance, equity investments and trade finance. This would enable the Bank to contribute to the sustainable economic growth and inclusive social development of its RMCs individually and jointly, in fulfilment of the Bank’s mandate.

More specifically, the Bank’s engagement in its selected non-sovereign operations will aim to maximise the catalytic impact of its limited resources, while seeking to promote inclusive growth and the gradual transition to ‘green growth’ in its RMCs. It will also help scale up financing in the Bank’s High 5 priority areas of intervention.

Under this NSO Policy, the Bank would provide financing to non-sovereign operations subject to four conditions: (i) the borrower is a private enterprise or an eligible public sector enterprise; (ii) the operations are financially sound; (iii) the operations should result in satisfactory development outcomes, including supporting or creating opportunities for private sector development; and (iv) the Bank brings additionally, which could be either financial or non-financial.

The Policy would ensure that NSOs: (i) are well-prepared with clear value added/additionally brought by the Bank; (ii) are technically, economically and financially sound, and diligently managed, adhering to high ethical norms; (iii) are environmentally and socially sustainable; and (iv) have solid prospects of generating significant development results in the RMCs in which they are implemented.

The NSO Policy does not apply to the Bank’s sovereign loans and sovereign-guaranteed loans. Such operations will continue to be governed by the relevant policies that guide the Bank Group’s public sector operations.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Development Bank Group (AfDB)

Africa Oil Week (AOW) has announced their partnership with SuperReturn. This new partnership offers delegates attending SuperReturn Africa, the continent’s biggest investor conference, access to Africa Oil Week on Thursday 8 November 2018.

For operators across the continent, raising capital remains one of the biggest challenges; whether it is funding exploration and production, or financing key infrastructure projects that will secure asset monetization for the long term. Africa Oil Week, in partnership with SuperReturn Africa, will now be able to offer an enhanced environment for operators to meet prospective financial partners, as well as ministers, senior government officials, national and independent oil company executives to exchange ideas and network.

In celebration of this exciting partnership, Africa Oil Week will be welcoming SuperReturn delegates to attend AOW on Thursday 8 November. The day will kick off with a live panel debate on ‘Global Funding Strategies and M&A for the African Upstream’ broadcast on CNBC Africa. Speakers confirmed for this important panel include Samaila Zubairu, President & CEO of the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), Solomon Asamoah, CEO of the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund and Paul McDade, CEO of Tullow Oil.

Following the live broadcast, AOW will host two breakout finance sessions addressing some of the key issues raised in the CNBC panel in greater detail, these include: the role of global finance in the African upstream and how to drive transactions in African infrastructure.

Through this partnership, AOW looks forward to welcoming the continent’s most active energy investors who will gain unrivalled access to the opportunities spread across Africa’s upstream oil and gas markets.

“We are really excited to announce this partnership with SuperReturn Africa. This partnership will allow us to continue to provide a business and intelligence transaction platform and meeting place for Africa’s upstream oil and gas markets.“ – Paul Sinclair, Conference Director, Africa Oil Week.

Africa Oil Week will take place at the CTICC in Cape Town, South Africa on the 5 – 9 November 2018.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Africa Oil Week.

Cameroon has been experiencing a significant decline in its cocoa production for several months now. The decline according to cocoa farmers is due to the impact of climate change and the use of bad agro chemicals.

The ongoing Anglophone crisis has also hampered cocoa production in Manyu, a cocoa growing area located in the southwest of the country.

“Because of the crisis, some buyers are now afraid to come here, during this period for example, big buyers prefer to give money to small retailers so they come to buy for them, John Ebot said.

The government which plans to increase cocoa production to 600,000 tons by 2020 has encouraged the planting of cocoa seedlings on 400,000 hectares of land.

Cameroon’s inter professional cocoa-coffee council predicts a slight improvement in production around 230 000 tons.

‘’ You see the quantity I have removed at this time; yes this is not our real cocoa season. The season is almost over. This is just the finishing, cocoa farmer, John Ebot said.

According to the latest estimates of the Interprofessional Cocoa and Coffee Council, the average price of cocoa beans per kilogram for farmers has reduced from a little over $ 2 at the beginning of the last season to $ 1.58 cents or less at the moment.

Source: Africa News

MTN Cameroon’s subscriber base declined by 5.9 percent from December 2017 to 6.6 million on 30 June in a difficult operating environment, hit by a data shutdown and weak economic activity. Service revenue decreased by 7.0 percent, affected by the lower subscriber base, and despite 15.0 percent growth in data and 71.2 percent growth in digital revenue.

The number of active MoMo customers increased by 10.5 percent from December 2017 to 1.2 million, with revenue up by 404 percent year on year. EBITDA declined by 44.1 percent and the EBITDA margin narrowed 11.8 percentage points to 19.2 percent.

Source: Telecompaper

Cameroon’s second largest employer, the Cameroon Development Corporation, says it may be forced to downsize because thousands of workers have fled fighting between security forces and separatists seeking an independent English-speaking state.

The atmosphere is quiet at the workers’ residential area of the Cameroon Development Corporation in Illoani, a village of about 5,000 people. But it’s not a holiday. Many workers at the CDC, a state-run agro-industrial company in the English-speaking southwest, have simply fled.

Armed separatists seeking an independent English-speaking state in April killed a Cameroonian soldier in the area. The attack touched off sporadic clashes that have since led thousands of villagers to flee the area, including more than 2,000 of the CDC’s 20,000 workers.

54-year-old William Kangue, a father of three, said he abandoned his job and fled the area because of ongoing clashes.

“The secessionist guys attacked in broad daylight,” he explained. “There were bullets flying everywhere, flying over my house. People got shot, civilians must [flee] especially. Many people have gone away from their communities and so their farms have been abandoned.”

The military on Sunday said separatists attacked at least nine villages in the southwest over the weekend, killing a policeman and four soldiers. More than 200 separatist fighters clashed with the military at Wotutu village, according to a military communique, home to hundreds of CDC workers.

The military’s report could not be independently verified.

Separatists seeking to establish an English-speaking republic within Cameroon consider the state-run CDC a legitimate target. The company’s vehicles, tractors, buildings and warehouses have been torched and some of their staff kidnapped.

Despite ongoing violence, some locals refused to run away.

Fifty-seven-year old CDC nurse Suzan Nenda said they have received threats from separatists to stop working and leave the area. But she rejects leaving the village of her birth.

“If death comes, then it is God’s making that I have to die,” she said. “People are not living in their houses. Most of them are in the bushes. Some of the houses are burned, some of the villages are burned. People don’t have places to stay so they have decided to stay in the bush. They build huts in the bush and stay there.”

The CDC runs banana, palm oil, and rubber plantations in Cameroon’s troubled southwest. But its Director General Franklin Njie said only one of its 11 estates is functioning normally.

“Most of our units, estates, oil mills, factories are shut down completely while some are operating timidly,” he said. “It is the only Debuncha palms estate that is operating normally, but amidst threats. Since the first of July 2018, the banana sector has been hit. The pack house [warehouse] was attacked and set ablaze. Till today, no work is going on.”

Njie said CDC’s gross revenue has dropped by 75 percent. He said if the attacks continue, they may be forced to lay off as many as 5,000 workers.

The unrest in Cameroon began in November 2016, when English-speaking teachers and lawyers protested being forced to use French in schools and courts and called for greater autonomy. The government crackdown that followed only encouraged separatists to take up arms.

Authorities say at least 300 people, including soldiers and police, have been killed in the fighting since.

Culled from the VOA

The crisis in anglophone Cameroon is damaging the Southwest Region’s economy, with palm oil plantations closing and the cocoa trade tumbling, an NGO report said Wednesday. The Southwest Region faces almost daily clashes between the army and separatists in a conflict that originated mainly in Cameroon’s second anglophone area, the Northwest Region.

The state-run palm oil company Pamol has deserted some of its plantations, and cocoa and coffee production has stopped because villages have abandoned their crops, according to the Cameroon NGO Human Is Right. Sources at the private firm Telcar Cocoa, a market leader, told the NGO that insecurity in the region had caused an 80 percent fall in cocoa trade. Company officials should negotiate with fighters to secure their facilities in remote villages, the sources said. Meanwhile rubber and oil plantations have been abandoned in two of Southwest Region’s six districts, Ndian and Meme.

The crisis has led to a 70 percent increase in unemployment in the agricultural sector, the report found. Both the Southwest Region and the Northwest Region were once under British rule before joining francophone Cameroon in 1961 after independence. For years, resentment built among anglophones, fostered by perceived marginalisation in education, the judiciary and the economy at the hands of the French-speaking majority. Demands for greater autonomy were rejected by 85-year-old President Paul Biya, in power for more than 35 years, leading to an escalation that saw the declaration of the self-described “Republic of Ambazonia” in October last year.

www.vanguardngr.com

South Africa on Friday launched a set of limited edition bank notes and gold coins to mark the 100th anniversary on July 18 of the birth of Nelson Mandela.

The South African Reserve Bank said the notes depict Mandela’s life including his upbringing in rural Eastern Cape as the son of a chief, his 27-year incarceration and the end of apartheid in 1994 when he became president. Mandela died in 2013 aged 95.

The launch forms part of events across the world, culminating locally in an annual Mandela Day lecture by former U.S. president Barack Obama next week.

The etching on the 1-ounce gold coin of a smiling middle-aged Mandela with his hair parted down the middle was designed by Zimbabwe-born Sindiso Nyoni, whose work includes stinging rebukes of former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe.

“Growing up and living most of my life under a dictatorship, we were not able to experience this feeling of democracy that South Africans have,” Nyoni said. Mandela’s face already graces all South Africa’s banknotes.

Source: Africa News

The economy of the troubled English-speaking regions in northwest and southwest Cameroon is slowly grinding to near halt as the long-drawn out security crisis is forcing local businessmen to put their safety over commerce. It is also driving away many of the biggest traders originally from neighboring Nigeria who have traditionally run key markets in towns around the regions.

The crisis, which started as a modest industrial strike action by English-speaking lawyers and teachers against the imposition of French, has spiraled into an unprecedented internal armed conflict. There are fears the country could slide into civil war as the conflict persists. In recent months, frequent clashes between government forces and separatists seeking to establish a state they would call ‘Ambazonia’ has left scores of civilians dead, including women and children.

The recurrent deadly confrontations have provoked mass movement of people. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that no fewer than 160,000 people have been internally displaced, while a further over 21,000 have crossed to next door Nigeria as refugees.

In a bid to express dissent activists have instituted a civil disobedience action called “ghost town”; which grounds daily activities every Monday, with extensions to some other key days. Traders who spoke to Quartz see the operation as economically damaging as at least one full business day is lost each week since late 2016. Those who dare defy the order risk facing the wrath of unknown arsonists who have burned down shops in nearby towns.

Restrictions of the movement of people and goods have further worsened the already deteriorating situation for businessmen. Armed secessionists called “Amba Boys” mount intermittent road blocks on-and-off along major highways in the troubled area. The government has also had to officially close its western borders with Nigeria on at least two occasions, while dusk to dawn curfews instituted by some local administrative authorities have simply helped to worsen the precarious situation.

The conflict has also been marked by the disruption of essential utility services, especially the supply of electricity and network interruptions to telecommunication services. Internet services were cut off for 136 days between October 2017 and February this year.

Nigerian trade

Kumba, the economic hub of the South West region, located some 70 kilometers from the city of Buea, has a sizable Nigerian business community who are principally engaged in trade; selling motor spare parts, liquor, electronics, fabrics, cosmetic products, among others. Like in Nigeria itself, many of the traders are of the Igbo ethnic group and their neighborhood in Kumba is named “Igbo Quarter”.

Igbo traders are a fixture in markets across western Africa and beyond with key networks at home and even out to China, a primary source of many goods they sell. Most of the Nigerian traders in Kumba have been doing business in the town in the last two decades. But many are now considering leaving for both safety and business reasons. Similar to Cameroon, some ethnic Igbo political activists have over the last two years been reviving a call for the separate Biafra state to be carved out of Nigeria’s eastern region close to Cameroon. When this happened in earnest 51 years it sparked the Nigerian civil war which eventually led to the loss of well over a million lives.

Many Nigerian traders are not keen to wait to find out if the Cameroonian troubles eventually subside.

Fabric traders, Mr & Mrs Okezie, are preparing to return to their hometown in Abia state in Nigeria. The husband says it has been difficult to get supplies from Nigeria over the last three months, while the whereabouts of most of their customers who took wares on credit are unknown. “Like some of our other brothers, we just have to return home and see what life has to offer there,” he said. “Things are really tough here now and we see no way forward.”

Another Nigerian businessman who asked not to be named given the security uncertainty, said “the business environment has become extremely hostile.” He said sales had dropped off and he no longer felt safe being in Kumba. “On at least two occasions, Amba Boys have visited me requesting for groundnuts [cartridges for Dane guns] or money to support the struggle.

Kevin Ndubuisi, president of the over 250-man strong Imo State Union in Kumba says his Nigerian compatriots have been returning in their numbers. “But no one tells you when he is returning. Some have just gone back as though they were going for a business trip but never returned.”

Source: Quartz