While no one was really watching, shares of Jumia, often labeled Africa’s Amazon, hit an all-time trading low of $7.56 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday (Sep. 26). It ended the day down to $7.93 or a market capitalization of $614.9 million. In early trading on Friday it eased up to $8.73.
This week we published the 5th annual Quartz Africa Innovators list. As with previous editions we had a collection of 30 Africans who have dedicated vast amounts of their energies to improving their local communities and countries–and ultimately the wider continent–by focusing on solving one or more problems.
Digital enterprises in Africa are often heralded as the future of the continent’s development, particularly when it comes to “leapfrogging” the numerous barriers to becoming profitable businesses able to take advantage of internet technologies to scale rapidly.
The latest wave of xenophobic violence and attacks in South Africa has resulted in a growing exodus of Nigerians.
World Economic Forum events often have an air of exclusivity. Presidents, senior government officials, top executives of major multinationals and leaders of large NGOs all get together in Davos and around the world to expound on how to improve the future of our world.
In this Quartz members conference call, Nairobi-based reporter Abdi Latif Dahir and Quartz Africa editor Yinka Adegoke discuss this week’s popular field guide about China’s interest, and investment, in Africa.
These four leading voices on China-Africa matters in the 21st century agreed to discuss with Quartz Africa how they each see the relationship between African countries and China evolving over the coming years. Each person has a perspective that not only helps highlight some of the more pressing issues but also contextualizes where things are headed. All answers were edited for length and format.
Most tech ecosystems across Africa look west, to Silicon Valley, for inspiration. When young African entrepreneurs and investors have looked in the other direction, they have generally focused on China.
Much has been written about the need for African countries to collect more tax revenue from citizens and businesses. The IMF has been imploring sub-Saharan countries, particularly over the last decade, to focus on expanding and diversifying their tax bases.
There has been plenty of excitement around Jumia, the e-commerce company which became something of a flawed Rorschach test for how one defines African startups.
The number of people in Africa without access to electricity remain staggering and unchanging with every report—around 640 million people don’t have access to a grid. And even when some of people do have access the electricity supply is unreliable and unstable.
Thursday, May 30, 2019 was a notable date in African economic history as the day the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) came into effect, after which it comes to market on July 7.
The UN is demanding that Britain return control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
It isn’t hyperbole to describe last week as a turning point for the African startup ecosystem. The obvious reason: The successful initial public offering of Jumia. Yet it’s bigger than the e-commerce company, and it’s a tide that had started to turn since the second half of 2018.
Africa’s eurobond debt passed the $100-billion milestone after Ghana issued $2.7 billion on March 26.
For what would have been his 80th birthday, Google Doodle is honoring Hugh Masekela, the trumpeter and bandleader fondly remembered as the father of South African jazz.
Warner Music Group, the world’s third largest record label, is the latest major player to invest in the Afrobeats genre, inking a partnership deal with one of the Nigeria’s leading labels, Chocolate City Entertainment.
MPharma, the six-year old Ghanaian startup that manages prescription drug inventory for pharmacies and their suppliers, is buying Kenya’s second-largest pharmacy chain, Haltons, in an unprecedented deal for the African startup ecosystem.
Venture capital firms have been getting most of the investor headlines in Africa over the last decade. The idea Africa’s business hubs could replicate or even do a slightly ersatz version of Silicon Valley and launch the African Facebook or Google has also been too compelling a narrative to ignore for all stakeholders in the ecosystem.
Reports of an initial public offering (IPO) by Jumia, the pan-African conglomerate of e-commerce businesses, have been finally confirmed but details of its financials do not paint a pretty picture.
There’s a $700-billion opportunity for African countries over the next five years if they can close the gender gap in mobile-phone ownership, according to GSMA, the global mobile-trade body. It bases that estimate on the commercial opportunity for mobile operators and the expected boost to GDPs as more women get phones.
In a continent as economically and politically diverse as Africa, it’s almost impossible to paint all 55 countries with the same brush or group them together easily to address nearly any important question. If you’re a large corporate entity considering entry into some of those markets, that only adds to your uncertainty.
*Updated with details from INEC chairman
The focus on tackling the electricity supply deficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa has been on renewable energy over the last decade. In particular, the potential of solar and wind energy has been most loudly heralded as the solutions for the hundreds of millions of Africans without access to any electricity. The ability to use innovative, off-grid delivery systems with better energy storage technology without the need for fossil fuels, has been an almost irresistible narrative for most of us.
