Africa

1. Saudi-Africa ties grow
2. COP30’s key challenge
3. S. Africa-China auto talks
4. Ghana accepts US deportees
5. $48.3B trade fair deals
6. Steve Biko inquest to reopen
7. Weekend Reads

Kenya’s protest-inspired art.

Arise closes $700M Saudi deal

Saudi Arabia’s Vision Invest made its first deal in Africa, backing a $700 million capital raise by a pan-African industrial zone developer, the latest sign of Gulf states becoming key conduits for infrastructure development across the continent.

Vision Invest is putting money into Arise Integrated Industrial Platforms, which designs, finances, builds, and operates industrial parks across 14 African countries, including Benin, Chad, and Côte d’Ivoire. Arise leases facilities to companies and provides a supply of raw materials. The investment will help the company to expand across Africa, developing new logistics zones to promote export manufacturing and industrialization.

The deal highlights surging Gulf investment into Africa as countries including Saudi Arabia and the UAE look to boost ties and cement themselves as major players in African trade and logistics. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s six countries invested $113 billion in Africa in 2022 and 2023 in deals that covered a range of industries including renewable energy projects, ports, and minerals. Saudi Arabia alone aims to boost investments into Africa to more than $25 billion by 2030 as part of plans to strengthen ties, its deputy foreign minister said in July.

— Matthew Martin

Former COP chief warns of challenges

Protecting multilateral efforts to combat global warming is the chief challenge facing the upcoming COP30 climate summit, the head of last year’s COP told Semafor, as Washington prepares to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Mukhtar Babayev made the comments after attending talks by African leaders looking to secure $50 billion a year in a new continental climate solutions initiative.

“The main challenge is… how to protect a multilateral process, how to protect the climate agenda, and how to have very ambitious plans,” Babayev said in an interview, referring to Washington’s refusal to send negotiators to November’s COP30 meeting in Brazil.

Babayev said African leaders had shown a commitment to cooperate with international organizations, and pointed to Ethiopia and Nigeria as two countries that had shown leadership on climate discussions, noting that both nations had put themselves forward to host COP32 in 2027.

S. Africa courts China car manufacturing

Pretoria is urging Chinese carmakers to set up manufacturing bases in South Africa, encouraging them to invest in what is now a key export market for Beijing’s auto industry.

Deputy Trade Minister Zuko Godlimpi told lawmakers that the South African government was asking Chinese companies “to invest in hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles because that is the market that they are servicing globally.” The talks coincide with plans in Africa’s most industrialized economy to raise import taxes, so that “cheap imports do not price out South African-manufactured cars,” he said.

The local market has seen the increased presence of Chinese internal-combustion engine cars such as Chery and Haval, which are cheaper than the American and Japanese brands that still dominate the roads. Shenzhen-based electric vehicle maker BYD plans to increase its South Africa dealerships from 13 to 20 by the end of this year, and to at least 30 next year.

Ghana latest to accept US deportees

Ghana said it had accepted 14 migrants deported from the US as part of a bilateral agreement with Washington, following in the footsteps of other African nations approached by the White House as part of its immigration crackdown. President John Mahama said the deportees included several Nigerians and a Gambian, adding that the move was in line with rules that allow the free movement of people within regional bloc Ecowas. Ghana has since helped the Nigerians return home and is assisting the Gambian national.

The deal comes at a time when the US has raised tariffs on Ghanaian goods and imposed visa restrictions on its nationals along with other countries around the world. Eswatini, Rwanda, and South Sudan have already accepted deportees from the US, sparking debate over the legality of the move and concerns for the migrants’ basic rights.

Trade fair deals signed

The combined size of trade and investment deals signed at the weeklong Intra-African Trade Fair in Algiers, according to organizers. The fair, one of the continent’s leading trade exhibitions, is held every two years by the African Export-Import Bank. This year’s event was attended by more than a dozen African heads of government and participants from 132 countries. Host country Algeria accounted for nearly a quarter of the deals and contracts signed, the organizers said, without providing further details. Realizing the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area — the world’s largest free trade area by land mass — was a key agenda of the fair, with AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene calling for “stronger logistics and manufacturing value chains” to strengthen the continent’s ties.

Person of Interest: Steve Biko

South Africa will reopen an inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko — almost 50 years after he died in police custody.

Biko, who founded South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement when he was a medical student, died in a prison cell at the age of 30 after being beaten into a coma. He became “an international symbol of the struggle against the race-based apartheid system,” wrote The Guardian.

No one was prosecuted for Biko’s death after a 1977 inquest accepted the police account that he sustained injuries after hitting his head against a wall. But 20 years later, during Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, former police officers involved in the case admitted assaulting the activist. The inquest is the latest in a series of moves in South Africa to reexamine apartheid-era deaths and hold those responsible accountable.

Weekend Reads

• Western consumers who dismiss conflicts in Sudan and DR Congo as distant from their lives should look no further than their everyday products and sponsors for their favorite sports teams, John Prendergast, co-founder of war crimes watchdog The Sentry, argues in Foreign Policy. Exports from both Sudan and DR Congo still form key ingredients in items like cosmetics and paint; meanwhile, Western allies like the UAE — which has been accused of profiting off both conflicts — sponsor the NBA. “Recognizing how this implicates all of us… is the first step toward fighting back,” Prendergast says.

• The racial identity of Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate, has generated scrutiny in some US conservative circles, who question how he can be both African American and Indian. However, Mamdani’s heritage in his birthplace, Uganda, isn’t confusing to locals at all: Indian immigrants — who have been there for more than a century — are Ugandan, plain and simple, locals told The Guardian. “‘He’s not really African’ conveys a subtle message we have heard spoken about us — ‘We’re not really American,’” one Black historian told the outlet.

• Jaba juice, made from the leaves of a mild stimulant called khat, is getting an upmarket makeover: New businesses in Kenya have begun bottling the drink to sell in bars and nightclubs, Bloomberg reports. Traditionally only sold informally, jaba juice operates in a legal grey area as a narcotic, and businesses are looking to profit — at least until the law catches up. “It’s all a matter of time. You can’t fight the market,” one jaba juice business owner told the outlet.

• Pan-Africanism — the philosophical premise that a united Africa would give the continent both the diplomatic and economic power to better assert its desires on the global stage — is based on false premises, Ebenezer Obadare from the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank, argues. Pushing towards an ahistorical united identity, as well as outright rejecting Western notions of governance, is doing Africans a disservice, Obadare contends. “Unlocking Africa’s economic development should not hinge on an improbable political unity in an unspecified future.”

• It is difficult to know when to take Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the son of Uganda’s 80-year-old president, seriously, The Wall Street Journal’s Africa bureau chief writes in a profile. He has joked about invading Kenya, challenged US rapper Jay-Z to a duel, and boasted about having tortured the security guard of one of Uganda’s main opposition leaders. Considered a “loose cannon” by many, it’s unclear what Kainerugaba’s likely succession would mean for the long-stable — if autocratic — East African nation.

World Trade Organization Director-General Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will join the stage at The Next 3 Billion — the premier US summit focused on closing the global digital divide. Semafor editors will sit down with global executives and thought leaders to highlight the economic, social, and global impact of bringing the next three billion people online.

Sept. 24, 2025 | New York City | Delegate Application →

Business & Macro

🇳🇦 Green Metals Refining, a London-based company, plans to invest $59 million on the first phase of a sulphuric acid production plant in Namibia’s port city of Walvis Bay.

🇰🇪 🇳🇬 Access Bank Kenya appointed Ralph Opara, group head of the commercial banking division of the bank’s parent company in Nigeria, as its chief executive officer.

Climate & Energy

🇿🇦 South Africa’s electricity utility Eskom said it will build 55 charging stations for electric vehicles over the next two years, following the rollout of 10 stations in August last year, as the company begins adding EVs to its fleet of operations vehicles.

Geopolitics & Policy

🇸🇸 South Sudan charged Vice President Riek Machar with murder, terrorism, and other offenses, alongside 20 others, for an alleged attack on a military base by a militia from Machar’s ethnic community. President Salva Kiir stripped Machar of his role.

🇰🇪 Kenya will begin facing consequences in October for not complying with anti-doping codes in sport unless it addresses deficiencies, the World Anti-Doping Agency said.

Tech & Deals

🇬🇦 Telecom companies Airtel Gabon and Moov Africa signed a facility-sharing agreement that they say will improve service delivery and streamline costs, while limiting “the anarchic multiplication” of towers that “sometimes degrade the visual landscape.”

🇿🇦 South African lender Standard Bank closed a deal to lend up to $399 million to Cape Town-based private renewable energy producer Mulilo Energy.

Kenya’s youth-led protest movement has given rise to a new generation of artists. Music, street theater, graffiti, and spoken word have been harnessed to express discontent with the government. June 25th, a song by the Kenyan musician Henry Ohanga, better known as Octopizzo, has become an anthem of the demonstrations that began on that day last year. In eastern Nairobi, an artist who “tells the stories of his neighborhood through murals” has turned to depictions of the protest movement, The Washington Post reported, including painting one wall with the portrait of a crying woman holding the Kenyan flag, and another with a burning parliament and protester lying in a pool of blood.

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