Businesses avoid paying $200 billion annually in taxes by channeling their overseas’ investments through offshore financial hubs, a United Nations agency said Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The estimate by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development is one of the first attempts by an international governmental organization to put a figure on tax avoidance by companies that record their profits in countries with low tax rates, regardless of where those profits are actually earned.

Some of the best-paid people in this country—its lawmakers—are proposing an unusual measure: docking their own salaries, The Wall Street Journal reported. The volunteered pay cut is part of a new austerity descending on Africa’s top economy. Nigeria’s government makes most of its money from oil revenue, which has shrunk along with global energy prices. President Muhammadu Buhari came to office in May pledging to root out extravagant spending by a government that has grown accustomed to unchecked oil wealth.

Uchumi Supermarkets Ltd., Kenya’s only publicly traded retailer, fired two top executives amid a forensic audit and announced plans to hire a management consultancy to review its business strategy. The stock slumped. Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Ciano and Chief Financial Officer Chadwick Okumu were relieved of their duties, while Human Resources Manager Michael Kibe was suspended, Chairwoman Khadija Mire told reporters Monday in the capital, Nairobi.

South Sudan is running out of money, which along with a civil war and mass food shortages is putting the world’s youngest country at risk of becoming its youngest failed state, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the past two years, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion to try to help stave off escalating violence in South Sudan, government figures show. Other Western countries have also given massive amounts.

Proposed new obligations on multinationals to produce country-by-country reports on their financial affairs will have a “massive impact” on them, a leading member of the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation has said, the Irish Times reported. Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the Center for Tax Policy and Administration at the OECD, was reacting to what he said were “angry responses” to the organisation’s latest proposals on the topic.

Failed unsecured lender African Bank (Abil) has offered R1.65bn to junior creditors in a restructuring plan agreed on Thursday that may please some investors who had not expected to get anything back, Business Day reported. Abil collapsed under a mountain of bad debt in August last year, forcing the government to appoint external administrators to oversee a restructuring that includes carving out a "good bank" using its healthy assets worth R26bn. Junior creditors, which rank behind other creditors when a company or bank fails, had claims on Abil totalling R4.4bn, the bank said.

On May 1 — Labour Day — one of President Robert Mugabe’s top officials took to Twitter to offer a bleak assessment for Zimbabwe’s economy, the Financial Times reported. In unusually frank comments, Jonathan Moyo, information minister, tweeted: “This May Day our triple challenge is we’ve workers without work, we’ve lost the sense of labour value & we lack a strategy to create wealth!” Mr Mugabe’s government typically talks up Zimbabwe’s economy.

Administrators of the furniture arm of failed lender African Bank Investments said on Tuesday creditors were paid 14 percent of what they were owed by Ellerine Furnishers, which had debts of around 1.3 billion rand ($109 million), Reuters reported. Administrators Matuson Associates said they paid out 14 cents for each rand owed, higher than the previously anticipated 13 cents per rand. Ellerine was forced into business rescue last year, which allows for temporary protection from creditors, as parent African Bank Investments crumbled under bad debts.

Air Zimbabwe Ltd., the state-owned carrier that declared itself insolvent this month, is considering long-haul routes and seeking partners in an effort to repair its finances, Bloomberg News reported. The airline will decide by the year end whether to start flights to China and Brazil, acting chief executive officer Edmund Makona said in an interview on March 25. Another potential destination is New York, he said. The company’s only current international destination is Johannesburg.

Sierra Leone-focused mining company African Minerals has appointed administrators, it said on Thursday, having being battered by a rout in iron ore prices and costs related to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Reuters reported. After failing to repay its lender and partner in the Tonkolili iron ore project Shandong Iron and Steel Group, African Minerals has appointed Neville Kahn and Ian Wormleighton of Deloitte LLP as joint administrators of the company and of its subsidiary African Minerals Engineering Limited.