Africa

The projected value of Mozambique’s natural gas exports from approved LNG projects. The government this week approved regulations for the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which will manage earnings from the gas exports. The finance minister previously said the state expects its earnings from natural gas to peak around $6 billion per year in the 2040s. The new fund regulations will create an independent supervisory committee to oversee all operations related to revenues, deposits, resource allocation, and fund management. It will report to Mozambique’s parliament.

Saudis bet on African minerals for green transition

THE NEWS

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia wants to be a minerals and industrial powerhouse. Key to that plan: Africa.

Riyadh aims to drastically expand its domestic mining sector but acknowledges that even with the potential riches under its soil — $2.5 trillion, by its own estimation — it can only access certain minerals at home. So, as a top Saudi official told Semafor in an interview from the kingdom’s capital, it plans to invest abroad, fashioning itself as a hub for refining, processing, and manufacturing based on raw minerals mined abroad. And its priorities include addressing a shortage of infrastructure in African countries rich in critical minerals.

“Every good mine, big sizable mine in Africa, you need technology, you need schools, you need social developments, and you need infrastructure,” said Khalid al-Mudaifer, the vice minister for mining.

Mudaifer pledged the kingdom would help African countries build up their capacity to refine minerals into more lucrative products, thereby capturing more of the economic value of their resources, but noted that not all countries had a robust enough local supply chain to support their ambitions. “Sometimes energy is not there, infrastructure is not there, talent, power, grids,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has in recent months signed deals with four African countries to explore mining partnerships, and has held talks with the U.S. to jointly secure access to metals necessary for both countries’ efforts in the energy transition. Among Riyadh’s commitments has reportedly been to acquire $15 billion worth of global mining stakes to ensure access to critical minerals.

Saudi Arabia’s ambitions come at a time when several African countries are exploring ways to process minerals at home, thereby capturing more of their raw economic value and benefiting from the global green transition. Zimbabwe last year banned exports of raw lithium and encouraged local processing, and DR Congo has stated that it wants to move up the battery supply chain by processing more minerals locally. Africa Finance Corporation, a multilateral lender, in February signed an expression of interest to provide $100 million in financing to develop a cobalt sulphate refinery in Zambia by the end of 2025.

Rising inflation has been a major issue in Nigeria this year, continuing a decade-long trend. The country’s inflation rate has consistently hovered above the African average. The price of essential items — particularly food, medicine, and transportation — has risen dramatically since the start of the pandemic. A change in government last May has done little to quell frustration with the pace of price increases. Meanwhile, rising fuel prices have driven up food transportation costs. Residents in some parts of the country have taken matters into their own hands to find food during the ongoing crisis, with some people raiding government stockpile facilities and large vehicles containing grain. Inflation hit a three-decade high of 29.9% in January, and all eyes are now on the National Bureau of Statistics, which is expected to publish the latest inflation numbers on Friday.

Burundi’s ballers bow out

A geopolitical battle between Rwanda and Burundi has spilled over into the Basketball Africa League (BAL), the NBA’s sole professional league outside the United States. The BAL announced on Tuesday that Burundi’s Dynamo Basketball Club had withdrawn from the league’s fourth season, which tipped off on Mar. 9.

The league said the team refused to comply with its rules governing jerseys and uniforms. Dynamo players placed tape over a logo on their jerseys that read “Visit Rwanda” in their opening game against the Cape Town Tigers, and forfeited two matches this week after they refused to display the logo. Visit Rwanda is the Rwanda Development Board’s tourism arm, and has been a sponsor of the BAL since its establishment.

“Under FIBA rules, two forfeitures in the same tournament trigger the club’s automatic withdrawal,” league president Amadou Gallo Fall said in a statement. “This is a very unfortunate situation for the players and fans, and we share the frustrations of everyone involved.”

The border between Burundi and Rwanda was closed in January after Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye accused his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame of backing the Red-Tabara rebel militia, a claim the Rwandan government has denied. Burundi has said that the militia was responsible for an attack on Dec. 22 near the DR Congo border that killed 20 people.

Dynamo’s American guard Bryton Hobbs claimed on social media that the instruction to block out the Visit Rwanda logo on their jerseys came from the Burundi government. Voicing his frustration in a stream on Instagram Live, Hobbs said the team “knew what we were getting into coming into the BAL. People had to sign contracts with the sponsors.”

— Martin K.N Siele

🌍 The president of the African Development Bank has called for an end to natural resource-backed loans, calling them “asymmetric, not transparent and wrongly priced.” Akinwumi Adesina told the Associated Press that loans given in exchange for the continent’s rich natural resources left countries in a financial crisis. Several African countries have taken loans worth billions of dollars secured to their natural resources since the 2000s, with China as the leading lender.

🇰🇪 Kenya is pausing plans to deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti after the Caribbean nation’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry said on Monday that he would step down once a presidential council is created. A Kenyan foreign affairs official said Nairobi would wait for the installation of a new constitutional authority in Haiti before making further decisions about the planned security mission.

🇹🇩 Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Chad are facing starvation, the World Food Programme said on Tuesday. Food aid could be suspended if $242 million in funds are not made available to sustain the program. The agency said it is struggling to feed refugees who have fled their country since war broke out nearly a year ago.

🇦🇴 Angolan President João Lourenço was due to begin a state visit to China today, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. Lourenco and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to hold talks and sign cooperation documents. Lourenço, who will remain in China until Sunday, will also meet with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.

🇿🇦 The South African government’s plan to sell a majority stake in South African Airways has fallen apart. The public enterprises minister on Wednesday said there was “no clear path forward” for the deal to sell the controlling stake to the Takatso Consortium due to a revaluation of the carrier’s worth.

Sen. Michael Bennet, (D) Colorado; Sim Tshabala, CEO Standard Bank; Kevin Scott, CTO, Microsoft; Nicolas Kazadi, Finance Minister, DR Congo; John Waldron, President & COO, Goldman Sachs; Tom Lue, General Counsel, Google DeepMind; and Jeetu Patel, EVP and General Manager, Security & Collaboration, Cisco have joined the world class line-up of global economic leaders for the 2024 World Economy Summit, taking place in Washington, D.C. on April 17-18. See all speakers, sessions & RSVP here.

Tanzania is Africa’s happiest country, according to a report by the Global Mind Project. The East African country was ranked as the third happiest in the world, following only Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic, which was crowned the world’s happiest. The annual report is based on a survey of 500,000 people in 71 countries. In Africa, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Tunisia and Angola were among the ten happiest countries on the continent. South Africa, however, is the least happy country in Africa, and has the greatest proportion of survey respondents who are distressed or struggling.

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• What a rise in U.S. inflation rates will mean for the country’s election and interest rates.

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— Yinka, Alexis, Alexander Onukwue, Martin Siele, and Muchira Gachenge