Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari projects the nation’s budget shortfall will narrow next year as revenue from non-oil sources increases, Bloomberg News reported. Buhari asked lawmakers on Tuesday to approve the 2018 budget with a deficit of 2 trillion naira ($5.6 billion), compared to this year’s estimated fiscal gap of 2.356 trillion naira. Non-oil revenue is projected to triple to 4.2 trillion naira and will include funds raised from “restructuring of government’s equity in joint ventures,” he said in his budget speech in the capital, Abuja, without providing more details.

South African Airways will meet a group of domestic lenders on Tuesday to negotiate the refinancing of about 6 billion rand ($423 million) in outstanding loans, according to its new chief executive officer, Bloomberg News reported. The banks have in principle agreed to extend the loan terms, Vuyani Jarana, who took the helm at the loss-making airline on Nov. 1, said during an interview at Bloomberg’s Johannesburg office on Monday. The group is led by Nedbank Group Ltd. and includes FirstRand Ltd., Standard Bank Group Ltd., Barclays Africa Group Ltd. and Investec Plc.

Kenya’s Nakumatt is seeking court protection to rebuild its fortunes after creditors demanded millions of dollars owed by a company that grew from a small Rift Valley bed shop to become East Africa’s biggest supermarket chain, Reuters reported. One source close to the company, whose flagship Nairobi store was destroyed in the 2013 Westgate attack by Somali militants, said it owed creditors including landlords and suppliers as much as 20 billion shillings ($193 million). In January, the managing director of the chain, Atul Shah, told Reuters the debt then stood at $150 million.

The rand and South African bonds extended declines as foreign investors dumped the country’s notes in the wake of government forecasts for higher public debt and wider budget deficits in the next three years, Bloomberg News reported. Stocks rose to a record as gains for rand hedges offset drops for banks and retailers. The nation’s currency extended its longest losing streak in a month, while the yield on benchmark 10-year notes rose to the highest in 16 months.

Nigeria’s Senate voted in favour on Tuesday of launching an investigation into the default on a $1.2 billion loan earlier this year by Etisalat Nigeria and into how the funds were used. Etisalat Nigeria, now called 9mobile, took out a syndicated loan from 13 Nigerian banks but failed to make repayments earlier this year, Reuters reported. “The Senate is aware of allegations that the loans had been diverted to other uses not related to the business, as there was no evidence of what the company did with the loans,” the upper house said in an order paper published on Twitter.

Nigerian lenders have picked Barclays to try to find new investors for debt-laden 9mobile, two banking sources said on Thursday. Barclays has started work on the mandate and is in the process of setting up a database for prospective investors to conduct due diligence, they said. Banking sources had previously said Citigroup and Standard Bank were in the running for the role, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. But the lenders decided against them due to their previous links with 9mobile, the sources said on Thursday.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office will charge two former executives of collapsed oil company Afren on Wednesday with alleged fraud over payments they received via secret companies relating to business deals in Nigeria, Reuters reported. The SFO said in a statement former Afren Chief Executive Osman Shahenshah and former Chief Operating Officer Shahid Ullah would appear at Westminster Magistrates Court charged with two counts of fraud and two counts of money laundering.

A Bloomberg News report that South Africa’s National Treasury is seeking as much as 100 billion rand ($7.5 billion) from the government workers’ pension fund to finance struggling state companies is untrue, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba said. The Public Investment Corp., which manages the fund and has about 1.86 trillion rand in assets, has been asked by the Treasury to buy its entire 12 billion-rand stake in Telkom SA SOC Ltd. to pay for a bailout of South African Airways, two people with direct knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg News last week.

Debt and corruption scandals at Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. make the utility the biggest risk to South Africa’s economy and the government needs to replace its management, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said. Eskom plans to raise almost 340 billion rand ($26 billion) in the next five years, while meeting 413 billion rand of interest and debt repayments, which amount to 8 percent of South Africa’s gross domestic product, Bloomberg News reported.

The boards of West Africa-focused Avocet Mining and its Societe des Mines de Belahouro (SMB) subsidiary will resume talks on Friday aimed at saving the struggling gold operation from insolvency, Reuters reported. SMB, which operates the Inata gold mine in Burkina Faso, is is struggling to keep the mine operating after former workers seized a shipment of gold last year and faces possible insolvency after the expiry of a freeze on loan repayments. The boards of SMB and Avocet, which owns 90 percent of the Inata mine, were to meet on Sept. 8 to consider “all available options”, Avocet had said.