Africa

1. Gates prioritizes Africa
2. Green hydrogen costs
3. Ghana-UAE tech deal
4. Nigeria’s drone security
5. An inaugural exchange
6. Uganda’s borrowing plans

New malaria control nets.

Hello! I spent Monday in Columbus, Ohio — an atypical stop for an editor covering Africa but I had been invited to speak to a group of US-based pension fund managers and other investors at the National Association of Securities Professionals. They wanted to hear about the prospects of investing across the continent in the Trump 2.0 era. Unlike the fraught conversations I’ve had recently in Washington and African capitals — often fueled by frustration at the speed and scale of changes in US-Africa policy — there was an optimistic view about learning the best way to make a bet on Africa. Still, most discussions came down to how best to parse real and perceived African risk premiums and whether there was enough “patient capital” with a long view for development.

Ultimately, there was an acknowledgment that these investors and their US institutional colleagues would be more likely to invest in Africa-focused funds if the continent’s own pension funds led the way. That brings us back to the $4 trillion opportunity that the Lagos-based Africa Finance Corp. posits is available on the continent if domestic capital is efficiently mobilized, as CEO Samaila Zubairu told us last month. Unlocking more of this capital, to back everything from infrastructure to digital development, will have a transformational impact on investor outlooks much farther afield.

Gates focuses pledge on Africa

Bill Gates said the “majority” of the $200 billion he plans to give away over the next 20 years will be used to push development and innovation in Africa.

His Gates Foundation will focus on partnering with governments that prioritize the health of their populations. “By unleashing human potential through health and education, every country in Africa should be on a path to prosperity,” Gates said in a speech at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa on Monday. He highlighted examples of government-backed innovation in countries including Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Rwanda. Gates also spoke of the potential of harnessing artificial intelligence in health care and education, and will meet with several African AI leaders in Nigeria this week.

In May, Gates told Semafor that he planned to give away “virtually” all of his wealth and then sunset his foundation in 2045, but warned that his fortune would not plug the hole left by USAID and other foreign aid rollbacks in recent months.

— Paige Bruton

Mapping green hydrogen costs

Hydrogen exports from Africa to Europe will remain “prohibitively expensive” without policy interventions, a new study suggested. The fuel known as “green” hydrogen — made by splitting hydrogen out of water molecules using renewable electricity — has drawn much interest globally as a way to decarbonize heavy industries that are hard to electrify. As countries assess the most economically viable places from which to procure the fuel, some governments in Europe have been exploring importing cheaper green hydrogen in the form of ammonia from countries including Kenya, Mauritania, and Namibia. Research published by the journal Nature Energy, however, found that “de-risking and strategic location selection” would be key to making African green hydrogen exports competitive with those of other regions.

Ghana and UAE plan tech hub

Ghana and the United Arab Emirates signed an agreement to set up a digital hub in the West African country to attract global tech companies.

The proposed 25 square-kilometer site in Accra — to be developed by the UAE’s Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation — is worth $1 billion, according to Ghanaian media. The move is part of a broader push by the Gulf nation to invest in digital infrastructure in Africa. In May, Microsoft announced that it was partnering with UAE-based artificial intelligence company G42 to invest $1 billion in a data center in Kenya to expand cloud computing in East Africa.

Nigerian drone startup wins security job

Nigerian drone startup Terra Industries beat out a rival bid from an Israeli consortium to provide security for two hydropower plants in a $1.2 million contract.

Terra Industries, earlier called TerraHaptix, will supply a dozen drones and more than 35 towers for a local security company to boost surveillance of the plants, the company’s 22-year-old chief executive Nathan Nwachuku told Semafor. The plants, the location of which was not shared, “have been used as hideouts by bandits and even some terrorists,” Nwachuku said. The first drone deployments are set to begin in a few weeks.

The deal comes amid growing drone adoption across Africa in sectors spanning the military to health care delivery. Terra began producing drones in Abuja in April 2024, banking more than $1 million in revenue from commercial customers in the oil, mining, and agriculture industries in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. “Right now, our fastest growing market is the power sector,” Nwachuku said.

— Alexander Onukwue

Côte d’Ivoire launches new exchange

Côte d’Ivoire opened West Africa’s first agricultural commodities exchange last week. Around $54,000 of raw cashews, kola nuts, and maize were traded in the first 10 minutes of launch, RFI reported. Seven years in the making, the exchange seeks to replace informal trading practices in eight countries in the region with a regulated platform that adjusts to supply-and-demand changes.

“Such markets allow buyers and sellers to hedge against time fluctuations of prices,” Finn Ole Semrau, a researcher at German think tank the Kiel Institute, told Semafor, saying that hedging was of “special importance given the high volatility in prices of these crops.” Cashew nuts in particular face a short production season, while maize is key for Côte d’Ivoire’s food security. Cocoa — Côte d’Ivoire’s main agricultural export — is due to be added to the exchange at a later date.

— Paige

Uganda to borrow more money

The amount Uganda plans to borrow from three lenders to spend on infrastructure. Just over half will come from the African Export-Import Bank, with the remainder jointly loaned by Ecobank Uganda and the Development Bank of Southern Africa. The sum was confirmed by the Ugandan finance minister last week, adding to concerns from opposition lawmakers over the country’s growing pile of debt to fund development projects. Ratings agencies Fitch and Moody’s downgraded Uganda’s credit rating last year as public debt rose by 18% to more than $29 billion due to increased domestic borrowing.

Business & Macro

🇪🇬 Credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded Afreximbank’s long-term issuer default rating to BBB- from BBB, citing a higher credit risk from “the rise in the bank’s non-performing loans ratio.”

🇿🇦 South Africa’s economy grew 0.8% year-on-year in the first quarter, an “insufficient” growth rate that could see the economy “slide into the negative,” the country’s statistician-general said.

🇧🇼 Botswana revised its growth expectations for this year from 3.3% to “close to zero” due to a deteriorating downturn in the global market for diamonds on which the economy depends.

Climate & Energy

🇳🇬 Nigeria will cap tax credits for upstream oil operators at 20% of annual tax liability, according to a new executive order that also introduces a performance-based incentive for the upstream sector.

Geopolitics & Policy

🇬🇦 Gabon’s President Brice Oligui Nguema ordered a formal ban on the export of raw manganese from January 2029 to develop “local transformation of primary materials” and boost revenues.

🇸🇩 More than 4 million people have fled Sudan as refugees since the beginning of the civil war in 2023, the UN said.

Tech & Deals

🌍 Pan-African telecoms company Axian purchased an 8% minority stake in African ecommerce company Jumia.

🇿🇦 South African telecoms group Vodacom appointed Mohamed Abdallah as chief executive of its international markets and of Vodafone Egypt.

Scientists are heralding success with a novel approach to battling malaria after adding antimalarial compounds to bed nets that target the parasite that causes the disease, rather than the mosquitoes. In recent years, bed nets have been treated with insecticide to target the carriers of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, but mosquitoes have gradually built up resistance to the chemicals. Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that adding anti-parasite compounds in bed net-like prototypes “killed 100% of the parasites” even at very low concentrations. Malaria remains one of the deadliest infectious diseases globally, killing nearly 600,000 people in 2023, the vast majority in Africa.

Oil prices jumped on Monday despite the decision by OPEC and its partners to increase their production quotas for the third time in as many months. But many analysts remain decidedly bearish about their trajectory over the next couple of years, with far-reaching implications for the US economy and foreign policy, Semafor’s Tim McDonnell wrote.

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