Nigeria’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, has announced a 60-day ceasefire in a bid to kick start talks with the government. Albeit a fragile truce, the news should provide a boost for the government’s bolder stance on a host of political and economic policies, not least on the [Read more...]

 

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On June 25, my colleagues at Business Monitor International (BMI) hosted another Country Risk roundtable, dedicating 90 minutes to discussing the outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and whether the region will be able to decouple from the global economy. For those interested, the BMI Africa team kindly provided the presentation slides for the event.

As [Read more...]

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than here is a 3,460 word essay which illustrates the problems Nigeria is having with its currency, and why I think the naira has further to drop.

Start with chart one, which shows the total amount of US dollars the central bank sells to commercial banks each month [Read more...]

Sure, Zimbabwe’s inflation has recently been estimated at 89.7 sextillion (that’s a one with 21 zeroes after it) percent, but given plummeting commodities and the global recession, surely inflation is going to turn the corner in the rest of Africa. After all, yours truly recently pointed out that deflation, rather than inflation, may now be [Read more...]