Ivory Coast: back on the bond route
Less than three years since civil war erupted in Ivory Coast it’s back to business as usual. Growth rates are now among the highest in Africa and the west African nation is set to return to...
View ArticleGuest post: Africa’s sovereigns should stick to debt plan
Florian von Hartig of Standard Bank With nearly two months of the issuance calendar remaining until year end, African sovereign issuers have raised nearly double the amount of funding ($6.35bn) in the...
View ArticleZambia: downgraded, but not down
What do you do when you get downgraded by a major credit rating agency, citing deteriorating government finances and macroeconomic policies that “could deter investment”? Issue more debt! Or at least...
View ArticleAfrican credit ratings: don’t get carried away, says S&P
African growth is soaring away, as anyone who has looked at the IMF figures can tell you. Meanwhile, governments are able to tap the international debt markets, as investors are still willing to snap...
View ArticleGabon’s $1.5bn eurobond: telling the right story
Gabon joined the year’s rostrum of sovereign African eurobond issuers on Thursday with a 10 year “soft bullet” issue of $1.5bn priced to yield 6.375 per cent. It follows comparable landmark issues over...
View ArticleEast African bond issuers: not having it so easy
Tapping bond markets is something of a trend for many African countries in the past year, including Gabon this month with a $1.5bn 10-year eurobond priced to yield 6.375 per cent. But selling long-term...
View ArticleEM taper tantrums delaying Kenya eurobond issue?
Kenyan officials are on a round of investment meetings in London to discuss the country’s debut eurobond, pegged at $2bn, says the central bank. But market volatility is proving a nuisance and Kenya...
View ArticleGhana: the most fragile of all?
The discovery of oil and a rising consumer class had investors positive about Ghana’s growth story, holding up the west-African country as one of the frontier markets to invest in. But the recent broad...
View ArticleCopper’s decline sends Zambian kwacha into tailspin
The Zambian kwacha has been one of the weakest currencies against the US dollar this year, losing more than 8 per cent of its value against the world’s reserve currency during the past month alone....
View ArticleIslamic finance to get Africa boost
Two African countries – Senegal and South Africa – are just months away from issuing sukuk, or Islamic bonds, seeking to attract cash-rich Middle Eastern and Asian investors to finance their large...
View Article[video] Ivory Coast PM eyes July bond issue
Ivory Coast prime minister Daniel Kablan Duncan expects a sovereign bond planned by his country to come to market in July. He talks to Javier Blas about his financing plans and the challenges facing...
View Article“Africa Rising”– but can it duck the commodity curse?
Following Nigeria's example? The International Monetary Fund’s “Africa Rising” conference opened in Maputo with gushing descriptions about the “potential” and “opportunity” of the fast growing...
View ArticleSenegal leads way for sub-Saharan African sukuk
Senegal is days away from launching sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest sukuk, with the CHF100bn ($208m) bond expected to receive strong investor demand and create further momentum for sovereigns and banks in...
View ArticleUganda says ‘no’ to sovereign bonds
Uganda is not, after all, jumping onto Africa’s sovereign bandwagon. The East African country, a perennial candidate in the continent along with Ethiopia and Algeria to issue dollar-denominated debt,...
View ArticleIs Africa’s bond rush too risky?
African countries have been issuing bonds at a furious pace: the value of foreign currency sovereign bonds issued so far this year has already overtaken last year’s total (see chart below). That has...
View ArticleGuest post: Africa’s time is now for hesitant US corporates
President Obama’s US-Africa Business Summit in August drew a top-notch group of African heads of state, business leaders, financiers, and ministry officials. But did the event bring in new potential...
View ArticleAfrican local bonds – an untapped opportunity?
African dollar bonds are increasingly gaining mainstream acceptance as the continent’s brisk economic growth and low interest rates in the developed world help buoy demand for high-yielding debt. The...
View ArticleGuest post: oil price slump to hit indebted African nations
By Ben Payton, Maplecroft Africa’s booming economic performance over the past decade has seen GDP growth jump from an average of 2.5 per cent a year in the 1990s to 6 per cent a year since 2000. Asia’s...
View ArticleGuest post: why are SWF’s shy of African investments?
By Juergen Braunstein, London School of Economics Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) could easily resolve Africa’s infrastructure funding issues, or go a long way toward doing so. So why are they so...
View ArticleHow the US Fed may affect African currencies
By Neville Mandimika, Atria Africa Since Ben Bernanke suggested that the US Federal Reserve was starting to consider slowing down its asset purchase program (QE), markets have been trying to price this...
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