STORY: Here are five business stories making headlines in sub-Saharan Africa this week.
A court in Kenya has frozen more than $40 million in accounts belonging to Africa-focused payments giant Flutterwave under the country’s anti-money laundering laws, court documents have shown.
The Nigerian startup, valued at more than $3 billion, said is operations are regularly audited and that allegations of financial impropriety in Kenya were “entirely false”.
The Ethiopian unit of telecoms operator Safaricom will start the phased launch of its network from next month, its chief executive said on Thursday (July 7).
Safaricom led a consortium, including South Africa’s Vodacom and Britain’s Vodafone, which secured Ethiopia’s only second operator licence for $850 million last year.
Crude oil theft poses an “existential threat” to Nigeria’s oil industry, Shell’s managing director in the country has said.
Osagie Okunbor told an energy conference on Wednesday (July 6) that theft was one of the reason’s Africa’s biggest oil exporter could not meet its OPEC quota of 1.8 million barrels a day.
Tanzania has signed a $900 million agreement for a Turkish firm to build a 100-mile railway line.
It’s part of a bigger project to connect Dar Es Salaam on the Indian Ocean to Mwanza on Lake Victoria.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been pushing to complete such infrastructure schemes – designed to boost trade with Tanzania’s neighbors – that were initiated by her late predecessor John Magufuli.
And finally a mission from the International Monetary Fund is in Ghana to discuss a possible programme of support.
Ghana has previously refused to seek IMF help but said last week it would hold formal talks amid worsening economic hardship which has prompted protests.
