This week in Africa’s Finance

Good day,

Welcome to Africa Finance Today. (Approx. 1.3 minutes read)

It’s been an exciting week already and we are still celebrating the small steps we took to launch our platform – Africa Finance Today. To be truly honest, we have been surprised by the amount of feedback we received from all of you. I think it’s fair to say that there are still so many good people out there who are curious to see others soaring.

We couldn’t help but admire the love we have received in the last three days since we unveiled our latest platform. We are not merely saying this, because we know it takes effort for y’all to appreciate good content and that’s exactly what we are striving to achieve from Day One.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in our field, it takes an entire world to build a platform from scratch. As such, we count on you for making this happen. A lot has already happened this week and here are some of the things we are excited about.

IT’S A WRAP 🎁 
We introduced to you, Africa Finance Today

• 🌍️ Africa Finance aims to become the leading source of insightful content into the world of finance, business, and economics in Africa. Simple.

• 📰 We reiterated that storytellers like me have a responsibility to tell these stories in a way that engages people and powers the masses to take decisions that affect their lives.

• 🌍️ We said storytellers have an opportunity to shape narratives and this is even truer in Africa where our story has been told by outsiders in a tainted way. We can change this and for the better.

• 💰️ Our friends said they couldn’t have witnessed a better platform like ours that is pioneered by a young African. We are not even bragging; we are over the roof for these compliments. We also know that it puts pressure on us to deliver more.

DEEP DIVE
This week, we published two pieces focusing on two companies each trying to raise the bar higher in their own field.

• 🏍️ 🔋 Ampersand is an electric motorcycle company defying the odds to disrupt markets they believe have potential and are nascent that they are way optimistic to expand their battery technology across the region.

• 🇷🇼 🇰🇪 Ampersand started in Rwanda out of a small garage. You would say it is surprising to see them sprinkle across the region to now Kenya, but it took a good amount of R&D for them to get here. Their latest fundraising round at a tune of $19.5mn is a testament to that.

• ⛏️ 💹 Aterian Plc’s race to expand across Africa was our second story this week. The London Stock-Exchange listed firm has been on a roll recently, announcing major investment into mining companies in key African markets.

• 🇧🇼 Their latest announcement was the acquisition of a 90% interest in Botswana’s Atlantis Metals. This is a major development that gives additional capabilities to Aterian to extract copper and lithium, critical metals for the energy transition.

• 🇧🇼 💎 One winner in this whole equation is Botswana, a diamond hotspot. Botswana keeps attracting major investment into its mining industry. This week, global diamond giant De Beers approved $1 billion spending to extend the life of its flagship Jwaneng mine in Botswana. The other winner, you ask? Please go and read the full story here.

BONUS 💸 
The richest man in Africa Aliko Dangote is under scrutiny.

• 🇳🇬 The anti-graft commission in Nigeria raided the offices of the richest man in Africa, Aliko Dangote. This has sent shockwaves across boardrooms given that no one would have seen this happening for a powerful oil rig mogul like Dangote.

• 🏦 How could it even happen in Nigeria where he who has monetary superiority influences what happens in the country? Even the Dangote Group was surprised that they described the incident as “unwarranted embarrassment.” The group said it faces no accusations of wrongdoing but it is also ironic to think that the entire government commission would just wake up and raid the offices of an influential man for no reason.

What we know

• 👮 🏢 The storming of Dangote’s offices relates to the government’s ongoing investigation into an unfair forex exchange practices across key businesses in Nigeria. The Commission believes the ex-Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria could have given preferential forex allocation to powerful individuals and organizations.

• 🇳🇬 This is not surprising when you think about. Nigeria is known for its high levels of corruption and scandals like these make up the business of the day. Whether this signals the commitment of the current president to uproot graft is a question of another day.

• 👂️ For now, we shall keep an eye to see how all this is unfolding. At the moment, it might not make a lot of buzz but this could turn out the most popular story in the next couple days, weeks or months.