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Friday 09th of August 2019 |
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The chaos cycle -Powell speaks -Trump tweets -China reacts -Markets freak via @BW Africa |
First, of course, is Donald Trump, who has rediscovered his power to send markets soaring—or into a tailspin—with less than 280 characters on Twitter. Then there’s U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who repeatedly finds himself on the receiving end of nasty Trump tweets for abiding by his mandate to do what’s best for the U.S. economy, which isn’t necessarily always the same thing as what’s best for the sitting president. And in Beijing, it’s Xi Jinping, the president of China who sits atop a Communist Party in which politicians and central bankers famously sing from the same hymnal, at least when the audience is outside observers.
The financial markets have been like a mosh pit where these three players bang against one another. Powell, under pressure from Trump to cut interest rates aggressively, sent markets reeling by signaling the central bank’s rate cut last month was a “mid-cycle adjustment” and not the start of an aggressive loosening of monetary policy. The very next day, Aug. 1, Trump exacerbated the sell-off by saying he would place tariffs on practically any U.S. imports from China that don’t already have them, starting in September. The response from Beijing on Aug. 5 caused the biggest waves in global markets, as the People’s Bank of China allowed its currency to depreciate by the most since 2015 and reach more than 7 per dollar, a threshold it had prevented the yuan from crossing in recent years. China also asked state-owned companies to suspend purchases of U.S. crops, renewing pressure on the beaten-down prices of American corn and soybeans.
With each of these collisions, the fragility of the global economy and markets is exposed. It seems increasingly possible that something big and important is broken. Investors who’d believed U.S.-China relations were stabilizing, if not improving, were caught on the wrong foot when tensions abruptly escalated. The prevailing assumption that President Trump won’t allow the trade war to continue through the 2020 presidential campaign season is being reconsidered, as the two sides appear further apart than ever. Economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., for example, no longer expect a trade agreement before the election and see the Fed cutting its benchmark interest rate two more times this year in an effort to counteract the economic damage that will be done by the impasse.
the trade war morphs into a potential currency war—in which countries race to devalue to get a competitive edge for their exports—there are whispers about how and where the tensions could escalate further. Could the U.S. thumb its nose at China and sell F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan? Or could Washington signal support for the anti-Beijing protesters who’ve paralyzed Hong Kong this summer? And what could be at risk among more than a quarter of a trillion dollars of U.S. investments in China since 1990?
All these questions are arising in the dog days of summer, a time of year when Wall Street’s vacation calendars are jammed and markets seem especially easy to rattle. Measures of stock market volatility tend to rise on average in August, and some of the ugliest swoons in equities over the past decade have occurred in this month. The S&P 500 index has shed about 6% from its last record, in late July, leaving it below the peak it reached in January 2018 at the height of optimism surrounding Trump’s corporate tax cuts. Even the most reliable big spenders in the market these days—corporations themselves—have had trouble keeping share prices afloat. Shares of Google parent Alphabet Inc. surged almost 10% after the company announced a $25 billion share buyback plan on July 25. The stock proceeded to lose almost all of that gain in the following week.
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Alberto Giacometti (1901 - 1966) investigated the human figure for more than forty years @Guggenheim Africa |
Giacometti was born in the Swiss village of Borgonovo. His father, Giovanni, a recognized Post-Impressionist painter, introduced him to painting and sculpture at a young age. Giacometti moved to Paris in 1922 and eventually settled in a 15-by-16-foot studio in the artists’ quarter of Montparnasse. He produced the greater part of his oeuvre in this tiny space, which he maintained until the end of his life. Giacometti’s brother Diego, also an artist, became his assistant; he and Annette Arm, whom Giacometti wed in 1949, were the artist’s most frequently rendered models. During his early years in Paris, Giacometti pursued a deep interest in Cubism and a fascination with the unconscious and dream imagery that led to his association with the Surrealists. African, Cycladic, Egyptian, and Oceanic art captured his attention as well, influencing the formal development of his figures. In the late 1930s he began sculpting pocket-size heads and figures in which he explored perspective and distance; these spatial concerns would remain paramount throughout his career. Giacometti may be best known, however, for the painted portraits and distinctive sculptures that he created in the late 1940s. These innovative works, including a series of elongated standing women, striding men, and expressive busts, resonated strongly with a public grappling with the extreme alienation and anxiety wrought by the devastation of World War II. Giacometti was unflinching in his portrayal of humanity at its most vulnerable.
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At 67, Suu Kyi was poised and striking, a flower tucked into her long black hair, which was streaked with gray. @TheAtlantic Law & Politics |
A picture of Mahatma Gandhi looked down with a serene smile.
The meeting was a high-water mark for three historic figures. Obama had just decisively won a second term as president. Clinton, then secretary of state, was about to prepare her own run for the presidency. Released from house arrest in November 2010, Suu Kyi had just been elected to the Myanmar Parliament in a by-election that her party had won in a rout. In a country where any unauthorized assembly had until recently been illegal, tens of thousands of people had greeted Obama’s motorcade. Suu Kyi—the daughter of Aung San, who led the country to the brink of independence in the 1940s—had become a potent symbol, an international icon of resistance against the military junta and the repository of the Burmese people’s remaining hopes. But she spoke to us as though she had no interest in being an icon. “I have always been a politician,” she told Obama firmly in her British-accented English. After the meeting, as Obama’s motorcade snaked through a throng of Suu Kyi’s supporters, many of them holding posters with her face on it, he said something in the back of the limo that has stuck in my mind. “I used to be the face on the poster,” he said. “The image only fades.” “The only real prison is fear,” she famously wrote, “and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.” Aung San founded the modern Burmese military in 1941. He fought alongside the Japanese to rid Burma of British colonialism, then fought alongside the British to rid Burma of Japanese domination, then negotiated Burma’s freedom from the British. As the country approached independence, he was seen as the only figure with the stature to potentially unite its political factions and ethnic groups. But in 1947, he was assassinated at the age of 32. Unlike Mao Zedong or Jawaharlal Nehru or Suharto, Aung San would never be diminished by power. As Burma descended into civil war, dictatorship, and grinding poverty, he would remain forever uncorrupted, a symbol of the lost promise of independence. Suu Kyi was one of the few people I met while in government—others include the Queen of England, Raúl Castro, and the Dalai Lama—who made exactly the impression on me I expected them to. Her regal manner, elegant Burmese clothes, and Oxford English, along with the ever-present flower in her hair, lent her a kind of ethereal charisma. She seemed to straddle different worlds—East and West, inexperienced in government yet accomplished, imprisoned and free. Her stubbornness and her flashes of temper only reinforced this: Given what she’s been through, I would think, no wonder she’s angry and stubborn. Her lack of specificity—her idealism can be platitudinous—allowed others to project their own beliefs onto her, and made them feel that her cause was their own.
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The Crown Prince's power play From Benghazi to Assab and Khartoum, the UAE's strongman has emerged as a key player in regional conflicts @Africa_Conf Law & Politics |
From Benghazi to Assab and Khartoum, the UAE’s strongman has emerged as a key player in regional conflicts
The world has woken up to the dynamic and ruthless Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahayan's ('MBZ') status as a quietly dominant figure on the world stage, and in Africa in particular. While his older half-brother Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahayan has official seniority, the federal President and Abu Dhabi ruler has been infirm for years. 'The Most Powerful Arab Ruler Isn't MBS [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud]. It's MBZ,' said a recent New York Times headline. This has long been evident in several African conflict zones.
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Suddenly, the idea of pound parity seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may crash out of the European Union without a deal @business 1.2112 World Currencies |
Suddenly, the idea of pound parity seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may crash out of the European Union without a deal. Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock Inc., is short the pound and sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet -- a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the U.K. exit the bloc without an agreement. New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the Oct. 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fueling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling slid almost 7% in the past three months, the worst performance among major currencies, to about $1.2140 on Thursday. “The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks. The Bank of England said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations show a 5.6% chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2% in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table. There is now a 30% chance that Britain will exit the bloc in October without a divorce agreement, a Bloomberg survey of 13 banks showed last week. That’s more than three times the level from a similar poll in February. In the latest survey, strategists assigned only a 15% probability to the prospect of a deal being struck by the deadline. Sterling, and not U.K. bonds, offers the “cleanest” way to trade Brexit risks for BlackRock’s Harrison, who has had a short position in the currency for more than two months and is also using option strategies that benefit from an increase in volatility. His central case for the U.K.-EU split was one where he sees the current deadlock between the two sides persisting. Option prices and sterling’s trade-weighted suggest the market is still not adequately pricing in the risk of a no-deal exit, according to Allianz Global Investors portfolio manager Mike Riddell, who said that’s making him “fearful” about the currency’s prospects. Six-month implied volatility in the pound-dollar pair is still close to the past year’s average. “My core view is there will be some kind of extension that is just about the most likely outcome, but I am far less confident in that than I was at the beginning of the year,” said Riddell. “I thought there was just a 5%-10% chance of a no-deal Brexit by the end of March whereas now I think it is close to 50-50. Markets should be more worried.” The pound could slide 10% in the absence of a deal by Oct. 31, according to Riddell. A political turmoil that might potentially ensue would boost the odds of opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn becoming the next U.K. prime minister, which may see sterling sliding to $1, he added. Riddell was bullish on sterling since late 2018 and through the first quarter of this year, before flipping his view on becoming “increasingly worried” about the hard-line stance adopted by candidates who were then running to succeed May. BlackRock’s Harrison also started betting on pound declines two to three months ago when he expected Johnson to double-down on his no-deal rhetoric. While the U.K. currency will likely jump if a deal passed through the House of Commons, Harrison is skeptical that the path beyond would be far from clear. “There is a way of threading the needle that provides an upside sterling risk but I would not make that a central case,” he said.
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A @Boeing CODE LEAK EXPOSES SECURITY FLAWS DEEP IN A 787'S GUTS @WIRED World Currencies |
LATE ONE NIGHT last September, security researcher Ruben Santamarta sat in his home office in Madrid and partook in some creative googling, searching for technical documents related to his years-long obsession: the cybersecurity of airplanes. He was surprised to discover a fully unprotected server on Boeing's network, seemingly full of code designed to run on the company's giant 737 and 787 passenger jets, left publicly accessible and open to anyone who found it. So he downloaded everything he could see. Now, nearly a year later, Santamarta claims that leaked code has led him to something unprecedented: security flaws in one of the 787 Dreamliner's components, deep in the plane's multi-tiered network. He suggests that for a hacker, exploiting those bugs could represent one step in a multistage attack that starts in the plane’s in-flight entertainment system and extends to highly protected, safety-critical systems like flight controls and sensors. At the Black Hat security conference today in Las Vegas, Santamarta, a researcher for security firm IOActive, plans to present his findings, including the details of multiple serious security flaws in the code for a component of the 787 known as a Crew Information Service/Maintenance System. The CIS/MS is responsible for applications like maintenance systems and the so-called electronic flight bag, a collection of navigation documents and manuals used by pilots. Santamarta says he found a slew of memory corruption vulnerabilities in that CIS/MS, and he claims that a hacker could use those flaws as a foothold inside a restricted part of a plane's network. An attacker could potentially pivot, Santamarta says, from the in-flight entertainment system to the CIS/MS to send commands to far more sensitive components that control the plane's safety-critical systems, including its engine, brakes, and sensors. Boeing maintains that other security barriers in the 787's network architecture would make that progression impossible. "This is a reminder that planes, like cars, depend on increasingly complex networked computer systems," Savage says. "They don't get to escape the vulnerabilities that come with this."
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Cobalt, a semi-rare metal that derives its name from the German word for goblin, was given its moniker by medieval miners who frequently came across its noxious ores in their hunt for silver and gold Commodities |
After a 50% drop in prices this year, it’s turned toxic for Glencore Plc too. After reporting the worst financial results in three years, the world’s biggest commodities trader is shutting its Mutanda copper and cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The move will remove about a fifth of global cobalt supply and send shockwaves through a market that’s awash with unsold metal, much of it in Glencore’s hands. “The cobalt price today isn’t helping us, so why rush it?” Glencore chief Ivan Glasenberg said as the company reported earnings on Wednesday. “The only thing you can do that’s under your control is shut or reduce tonnages.” For Glencore, the precipitous fall in cobalt is more bruising because the metal, a key ingredient for batteries, was its shining star back in 2017. The miner made its copper and cobalt assets a big part of its selling pitch to investors, touting the future boom in electric cars and global urbanization. But the strategy hit pitfalls. Excess supply has overwhelmed demand for battery materials and because it’s a niche market, Glencore hasn’t been able to hedge its exposure to cobalt, leaving the metals trading business exposed to losses. To make matters worse, Glencore detected uranium in some cobalt last year, rendering it unsaleable. Closing the mine is an easy decision to defend when it’s not making money, but it may get harder to justify if prices rebound, said Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets Ltd. Mutanda produced about 27,000 tons of cobalt last year out of a global total of around 135,000 tons, according to trading firm Darton Commodities. “We’re not being OPEC. We’ve got an operation that wasn’t making money at these levels,” Glasenberg said. “You’re not going to run an operation that’s not making money.”
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Proxies battle over Tripoli @Africa_Conf Africa |
There's a stalemate on the ground while each side's foreign supporters use high-tech weaponry to try to change the strategic balance As the campaign of Benghazi-based strongman Khalifa Haftar to take Tripoli slows down, foreign powers are putting more and more resources into the fight, including armed drones and psychological warfare tactics in social and mass media (AC Vol 60 No 8, Haftar stakes it all). There's been a let-up in the overall level of casualties, but about 1,100 people, over 100 of them civilians, have been killed and around 120,000 people displaced, many of them to Tunisia. Impasse on the ground and pleas for a ceasefire from UN special envoy Ghassan Salamé and numerous regional and international governments have failed to budge either Haftar or the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Faiez el Serraj (AC Vol 59 No 7, Doubts about unity deal). In his bi-monthly briefing to the UN Security Council on 29 July, Salamé blamed both men. Despite their promised commitment to a political solution and elections, neither had taken any practical steps to stop the fighting, he said. 'The parties still believe they can achieve their objectives through military means,' he complained. In the meantime, misinformation and disinformation have become as much weapons in the conflict as aircraft, tanks and missiles. Leading officials in Haftar's Libyan National Army regularly announce a fresh push which they insist will result in imminent victory, while the GNA declares that it will force the LNA to retreat (AC Vol 60 No 14, Air strikes risk escalation). The LNA's last 'fresh push' was supposed to start on 1 August with Tripoli in its hands by the Muslim festival of Eid al Adhah, which is expected on 11 August. Media sites linked to one side or the other promote the claims, rarely bothering to check their facts. Salamé has noted the role of 'intentionally false news' in the struggle. That was on show at the beginning of August when photos of a crashed drone appeared on both pro-LNA and pro-GNA media sites, each side claiming that it belonged to the other and that their forces had shot it down. But it is not just Haftar and Serraj that appear to have little incentive to return to the table. Turkey has supplied the GNA with several of its domestically manufactured Bayraktar TB2 combat drones, while the LNA has acquired the technically similar, Chinese-made Wing Loong II drones allegedly from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but possibly Egypt. It was a Wing Loong II that featured in the recently published photos of a crashed drone, which would mean that the GNA shot it down, not the LNA. Nonetheless, the LNA have destroyed a number of Turkish drones, and more have been delivered. The war is good publicity for Turkey's growing drone industry. Both sides rely heavily on the drones, as was seen on 26 July, when the GNA attacked Haftar's key supply airbase at Jufra in central Libya, destroying two Ukrainian Il-76 heavy-lift military transport aircraft and, reportedly, killing a Ukrainian pilot. According to several sources, the attack was carried out by drones with the assistance of Turkish military 'advisors'. The GNA claimed it also destroyed a hangar for Haftar's drones and a munitions store. Furious, Haftar launched revenge airstrikes the following day against Misurata Air Academy, part of the city's shared civil and military airport. It was the LNA's first attack on Misurata, although it appears to have done little damage. LNA forces also attacked and occupied a military camp in southern Tripoli and the town of Qarabulli on the coast road between the capital and Misurata but were quickly forced to withdraw when GNA forces counter-attacked. Militarily, nothing was achieved but it did not stop the LNA again claiming that the battle for Tripoli was in its final stage. Whether the LNA has the resources to achieve this is questionable, although there are Sudanese reports claiming that 1,000 fighters from Sudan's controversial Rapid Support Forces militia arrived in Libya at the end of July to take over protection of LNA-controlled oil fields and terminals and so free up LNA fighters to join the battle for Tripoli. They are supposed to be the first batch of 4,000 RSF soldiers being provided to Haftar by Sudan's generals and paid for by the UAE. Yet the main drivers of the Libyan conflict are now Turkey and Qatar, backing the GNA, and the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt behind the LNA. It is not just a drone war but arguably the world's number one proxy war. Without Turkish military supplies, equipment, and, it's said, military advisors – all funded by Qatar – it is highly doubtful that the GNA could withstand the LNA offensive against Tripoli, let alone launch its own, such as the Jufra attack on 26 July. Equally, without equipment and, allegedly, F16 fighter-bomber support from Egypt and the UAE, it is doubtful whether the LNA could sustain its offensive. As Salamé noted in his Security Council briefing, the two sides 'are now fighting the wars of others and in so doing destroying their country'. Not that other countries are disinterested. The LNA has drawn comfort from perceived support from France, Russia and now from United States President Donald Trump, while Italy and the United Kingdom firmly back the GNA. In Tripoli, though, at least for the moment, most people are little interested in the war, Salamé or the GNA's relations with him. They have been more concerned with the power cuts (day long in some cases and which in the soaring summer temperatures has meant no air-conditioning) and, in the run-up to Eid, the lack of money in the banks and the high price of sheep to sacrifice. Many have had to accept that there will be no Eid sacrifice. They have also been much pre-occupied with the announcement in Tripoli that applications for the $500 foreign-exchange allowance for 2019 can be made at banks as of 20 August. It is a major handout, though too late for Eid. The dollars are bought at the official rate of around US$1 to 1.4 Libyan dinars, costing LD700. They can then be sold through black market dealers for around LD2,000, minus commission. That can be over 10%, but the profit is more than an average monthly salary and because the allowance is available to everyone, including children, it can triple or quadruple the average monthly household income. Needless to say, supporters of the LNA have called it a bribe aimed at diverting attention from the current crisis and reducing public discontent. They have urged people not to accept it, though there is little chance of that. Meanwhile, with the focus on Eid, the question now being raised by some analysts and observers, including some who support the LNA, is whether the LNA can continue the offensive afterwards or whether it will be forced by its foreign supporters to adopt a different strategy, possibly even a ceasefire. Salamé will be banking on it. The larger the foreign supporters loom in the conflict, the greater the pressure on them to make peace. In his Security Council briefing, Salamé presented a three-point plan to enable Libya to exit the civil war: an Eid truce, and an international summit to devise an end to hostilities, followed by a meeting of leading Libyans to agree on the way forward (AC Vol 59 No 23, Posturing in Palermo). He will be hoping the foreign players opt for a ceasefire, accepting that a clear-cut military victory is unlikely in the foreseeable future. But given their rivalries and the fact the war is costing them very little apart from cash and, in some cases, not much of that either, it could be a hope too far.
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SUDAN From revolution to realpolitik @Africa_Conf Africa |
Neither side likes the deal. The generals want to play for time and the activists see it as a first step to power.
For the thousands gathering in central Khartoum, waving flags and sounding horns around the Friendship Hall, the constitutional declaration initialled on 4 August was far from the revolutionary victory they had sought. It has taken four months since the overthrow of Omer el Beshir, tortuous negotiations, mass sit-ins and enduring murderous attacks by the security forces to get here.
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Ethiopia grants first financial services licence to foreign firm @ReutersAfrica Africa |
Ethiopia’s central bank granted a financial services licence to a foreign-owned company for the first time on Thursday, as the government begins to open up the economy of Africa’s second most populous nation. Ethio Lease’s new licence signals Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is moving ahead with the economic reforms he pledged when he took office last year. The company will lease equipment such as MRI scanners, tractors and drilling rigs to companies that can’t import such equipment themselves due to foreign exchange shortages. This will create jobs and increase productivity, Ethio Lease said in a statement. The company is owned by New York-based equipment leasing firm Africa Asset Finance Company (AAFC). There is a liquidity shortage and a lot of businesses are craving equipment that they just can’t get,” said Frans Van Schaik, chairman and CEO of AAFC. ''Almost every factory in Ethiopia will be able to tell you about how an equipment shortage or some other issue is delaying their construction or operations.” The company plans to import $600 million of equipment initially. Abiy wants the private sector to help provide jobs for millions of unemployed youth in the nation’s 100 million people. Ethio Lease will fill a significant unmet demand for equipment, National Bank of Ethiopia governor Yinager Dessie told Reuters in a phone interview. Yinager said that the central bank would like to license more foreign companies to lease equipment. “This will ultimately create more jobs, more employment and more economic growth,” he said. Yinager said the government was taking tangible measures to support the private sector, noting that last year the central bank allocated more foreign exchange to the private sector than the public sector for the first time. “We will continue this,” he said. The governor declined to specify current foreign reserves but said it was stronger than when Abiy took office 18 months ago. Ethiopia wants to open up its economy, said Van Schaik, but problems remain. “The bureaucracy in Ethiopia is overwhelming,” he said. “If you want to succeed in Ethiopia, you need to be patient and persistent.” The foreign exchange shortages have worsened in the past five years as the government spent heavily on infrastructure before export earnings from new sectors such as manufacturing took off.
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One Currency Is Missing Out on the EM Rebound. You Guessed It...@markets Africa |
While MSCI’s gauge for developing-nation currencies is up 0.2%, with 17 out of 24 major peers gaining against the dollar, the South African currency is poised for an eighth day of losses, the longest streak in two years. Mining production data released Thursday added to the rand-specific risk-off sentiment after it showed an eighth consecutive drop in June. Investors are also fretting about higher taxes to pay for a planned national health service, and lack of progress in rescuing Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the ailing state-owned electricity company. “The amount of risk the rand is carrying at the moment, people may not be willing to carry it over the extended weekend,” said Simon Harvey, a London-based FX analyst at Monex Europe Ltd. South African markets will be closed for a national holiday on Friday. The rand was down 0.4% to 15.1121 per dollar by 12:05 p.m. in Johannesburg, its weakest level on a closing basis since Sept. 2018. The rand is also the most volatile currency in the world, with the one-week implied volatility climbing a fourth day.
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Burundi malaria outbreak at epidemic levels as half of population infected @guardian Africa |
The outbreak in the tiny Great Lakes country has infected almost half the total population, killing about 1,800 people since the beginning of the year. According to figures gathered by the World Health Organisation, almost 6 million cases have been recorded since the first week of January to the end of July, with infections reaching crisis levels in May. “We are less than a year away from the presidential election,” one anonymous official told the AFP news agency. “[President Pierre] Nkurunziza, who is facing many crises, does not want to recognise what could be considered a failure of his health policy,” the official said.
Kenya
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Cannabis Real Estate Firm Bangi, Inc. to Apply for Cross Listing in Kenya in Response to Investor Interest @YahooFinance H/T @MihrThakar Africa |
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / August 7, 2019 / BANGI, Inc. (OTC Pink:BNGI), a diversified investment vehicle that acquires and leases specialized real estate assets in the cannabis, hemp and CBD industries, today announced that its Board of Directors has approved an initiative to cross list its common stock as Depositary Receipts on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), the leading stock exchange in Kenya, one of the fastest-growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. A dual listing in Africa would be a natural step for the Company considering its corporate name, “BANGI” means “marijuana” or “hemp” in Swahili, one of the most spoken languages in Africa. Kenya, being one of the major financial hubs in Africa, has regulations that expand its Capital Markets to the world. Under Capital Markets Authority Regulations, it will allow for citizens in the East African Community (EAC), which comprises of approximately 300 million people - - the same size of the United States - - the ability to invest in BANGI, Inc. The EAC is a regional intergovernmental organization consisting of six countries: The Republics of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, the United Republic of Tanzania, and the Republic of Uganda, with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. African Investors Will Be Able to Invest in BANGI via Seamless Payment Systems such as M-Pesa and Airtel Money The Company today also announced that its cross listing will represent the first U.S. company listed both in the U.S. and the NSE. The Company’s listing on the NSE will allow investors to use various seamless Financial Payment Systems such as M-Pesa and Airtel Money, amongst others, to purchase the Company’s shares. The listing of BANGI on the NSE should dramatically increase BANGI’s exposure to Africa’s investment community as it will enable investors to purchase stock in the Company through mobile platforms, which are currently used by more than 26 million Kenyans. According to the World Bank, M-Pesa processes more transactions within Kenya each year than Western Union does globally. By listing on the region’s largest Securities Market, which can be accessed by investors of all income levels via Financial Payment Systems, BANGI’s Cross Listing is a significant milestone both for the Company and the banking industry as it will greatly level the playing field. The Company also noted that its cross listing should significantly increase new investor demand for its stock as a result of the region’s recent reforms relating to geographic and industry diversification. The most significant reform relates to mandates that pension and institutional funds in the region are required to invest a large portion of their capital in companies with a focus in real estate, such as BANGI. Accordingly, as part of its cross listing strategy, the Company will pursue key initiatives designed to leverage these mandates in order to create and drive new investor demand for its stock.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BANGI, Inc. “The Kenyan capital market has grown rapidly in recent years and has also exhibited strong capital raising capacity, which will allow us to access an entirely untapped market valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars. We expect the cross listing will allow BANGI to expand its shareholder base, increase its liquidity and enable a convenient way for Africa’s retail and institutional investors to invest in the Company as we launch the initial stage of our growth strategy,” concluded Dr. Parsan.
To be added to BANGI’s investor or media lists, please call 833-BANGINC or via email at ir@bangistock.com.
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