Africa

1. Ethiopia flower firms flee
2. Mobilizing Africa’s miners
3. Cassava in AI boost
4. S. Sudan tensions grow
5. Aid chief calls for investment
6. Kenya’s debt woes
7. The Week Ahead

The discovery of lost South African seeds.

Foreign flower firms flee Ethiopia

International flower companies are fleeing Ethiopia because of a worsening conflict in the northwestern Amhara region, a key flower-growing hub, dealing a blow to one of the country’s major exports.

Germany’s Selecta One this month said it would move production to Kenya and Uganda, blaming “the unstable political situation and the uncertain military environment.” The company, which began operations in Ethiopia in 2021, is also laying off more than 1,000 local employees due to the fallout from the two-year war between the Ethiopian government and Fano, a loose collection of militias. The firm is following in the footsteps of other horticultural companies, including five Dutch-owned firms that have left or suspended production since the start of 2024.

Ethiopia’s cut-flower industry, which generated more than $500 million in revenues last year, is the country’s second-biggest export after coffee, according to central bank figures. The Ethiopian Investment Commission, which oversees foreign investment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

How US can mobilize Africa’s miners

Washington should partner with small-scale miners in Africa if it wants to boost its critical mineral supplies, argued a business leader in a column for Semafor, days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to accelerate American mineral production.

Building new US mines and infrastructure will take years, wrote Ademola Adesina, co-founder of a company that builds supply chains connecting African small-scale and artisanal miners with commodity buyers. Instead he puts forward a “near-term solution” where Washington could mobilize Africa’s small-scale miners through “targeted investment, transparent logistics, and predictable payment structures.” The move could boost their operations and meet America’s mineral needs. The US should unlock this “potential at scale,” Adesina wrote, through “partnerships with African countries that are built on trust, transparency, and speed.”

Cassava to deploy Nvidia’s tech

Africa-focused digital infrastructure company Cassava Technologies will deploy artificial intelligence software from Nvidia at its data centers in South Africa by June, before carrying out the same expansion at facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria.

The UK-headquartered Cassava said the move was part of its plan to build an “AI factory” in Africa to offer AI-driven computing services to digital businesses on the continent. Collaborating with Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chip maker, gives Cassava the “advanced computing capabilities needed to drive Africa’s AI innovation,” said the company’s founder and chairman, Zimbabwean entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa.

Cassava’s Africa footprint includes a 68,000-mile-long fiber optic cable network that runs from Cape Town to Cairo, a renewable energy company, and data centers. The group received a $90 million equity investment last December from the US International Development Finance Corporation, Finland’s Finnfund, and Google.

Uganda to send troops to S. Sudan

Uganda’s Parliament approved a plan to deploy troops to South Sudan as a power struggle escalates. Tensions brewing in South Sudan are related to a breakdown of the coalition formed between President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, a former rebel leader turned deputy president. Machar’s party last week withdrew from talks towards brokering peace.

Uganda’s Defense Minister Jacob Oboth made the case for the deployment to lawmakers on Mar. 20, stating that Kiir had requested Uganda’s help 10 days earlier to deal with growing unrest in the country. It is needed to “avert a potential security catastrophe in South Sudan,” he said.

The World Bank said this month it expects South Sudan’s economy to contract by 30% in the 2024-25 financial year because of the disruption to oil production, which cost the country around $7 million per day in lost export revenues. Fears of a new conflict in South Sudan, following a civil war from 2013 to 2020, have led to some diplomatic evacuations.

Miliband calls on CEOs to fill aid gaps

David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, called on the private sector to help fill the funding gap left by Western governments slashing aid budgets.

The IRC could lose a third of its roughly $1.5 billion in revenues because of the Trump administration’s cuts to programs funded through USAID. With the UK and other European countries also diverting humanitarian budgets to defense spending, “there needs to be a new global bargain about how to address symptoms of political failure, which are humanitarian needs of a high and growing kind,” Miliband, a former UK foreign secretary, told Semafor. That would include a bigger contribution from businesses: “The core of the argument is that if you want to enjoy the fruits of globalization, you need to bear the burdens.”

BCG, LinkedIn, Marriott, and Pfizer are among the IRC’s existing partners, as well as corporate philanthropic arms of tech giants such as Google, whose early-warning technology helped the IRC deliver cash assistance in advance of floods in Nigeria. Miliband wants to engage more companies in regions including Africa. “Philanthropically, it’s been slow going,” he said.

Kenya foregoes IMF funding

The amount of money the Kenyan government declined after abandoning a $3.6 billion debt-management program with the International Monetary Fund. The decision to forgo the IMF’s ninth review — which involved evaluating government efforts to tackle debt — infuriated investors and drove stocks lower. Nairobi’s decision comes as the country struggles with a surge in debt-serving costs, Reuters noted. Heavy government spending has sparked a severe debt crisis in Kenya: Last year the government was forced to abandon its proposed tax hikes after weeks of deadly protests. The country has requested a new IMF program and finalized a $1.5 billion loan from the UAE, weeks after issuing a $1.5 billion Eurobond.

The Week Ahead

• Mar. 23-25: Standard Bank hosts its inaugural African Markets Conference in Cape Town.
• Mar. 24-26: Zambia holds its first Digital Week conference in Lusaka.
• Mar. 24-26: Ghana’s monetary policy committee meets.
• Mar. 26: Mozambique’s central bank announces its interest rate decision.
• Mar. 25-26: African Development Bank and UN agencies meet in Cotonou to discuss modernizing public finance systems.

Business & Macro

🇪🇹 Ethiopia granted its first two licenses for privately-owned investment banks in the country to CBE Capital and Wegagen Capital Investment Bank.

🇰🇪 Ecobank Kenya injected $27 million to shore up its capital base in line with new central bank requirements.

Climate & Energy

🇳🇬 A gas pipeline in Nigeria’s Rivers state caught fire over the weekend, the third in a string of incidents that underscore escalating tensions in the oil-rich region rocked by a political crisis.

🇿🇲 🇲🇿 Zambia and Mozambique signed an agreement to build 375km of power transmission lines between both countries for $412 million.

Geopolitics & Policy

🇦🇴 Angola is stepping down from its role as a mediator between DR Congo and the M23 rebel group, its president’s office said.

🇬🇦 Gabon’s top court approved eight candidates to contest presidential elections scheduled for Apr. 12. They include interim President Brice Oligui Nguema, who seized power two years ago.

Tech & Deals

🇰🇪 A Nairobi court dismissed a lawsuit accusing Kenyan telecom operator Safaricom of infringing the copyright of a callback feature.

🇳🇬 Heineken-owned Nigerian Breweries acquired an 80% stake in the Nigeria operations of Distell, a South African wines and spirits group.

Underground seed banks in South Africa that date back more than 130 years have preserved plant seeds that were thought lost. The seed banks are natural storage areas found in the soil where some plants preserve their seeds. Fynbos are a type of plant native to the country — including bell-shaped blooms and grassy reeds — and the newly discovered seeds are alive, which means they could germinate in the right conditions. “Our new findings mean that plants can be restored to ecosystems using seeds banked long ago,” wrote researchers behind the discovery in The Conversation.

Math runs through Max Levchin’s thinking about Affirm, his biggest venture since he built PayPal with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and the rest of what became known as the PayPal Mafia.

The buy-now-pay-later loan service is what Soviet-born Levchin calls a “moral capitalist enterprise,” and has pledged to never charge its customers late fees. But that means there’s little room for error: “From the very beginning, the underwriting discipline here was the only thing that stood between us and losing money,” he told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.

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— Alexis Akwagyiram, Preeti Jha, Alexander Onukwue, and Yinka Adegoke.