Africa

An oil blending and storage company secured deals to supply South Africa’s state power utility with fuel oil worth more than 15 billion rand ($1 billion) at inflated prices by paying inducements, including donations to the ruling party, a forensic investigation has found, Bloomberg News reported. Econ Oil & Energy Ltd. allegedly won the contracts with the help of Thandi Marah, then senior manager of business enablement at Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., who interfered in the tender processes, said legal firm Bowmans, which Eskom commissioned to conduct the probe.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. has taken steps to protect its operations from disruptions after a contractual dispute with Oracle Corp.’s South African unit put its technical support services at risk, Bloomberg News reported. The state power utility confirmed on Monday that it’s involved in the disagreement in which Oracle initially claimed Eskom underpaid it by about 7.3 billion rand ($500 million).

The International Monetary Fund approved a $2.34 billion financing package for Kenya to support the country’s Covid-19 response and address an urgent need to reduce debt vulnerabilities, Bloomberg News reported. Approval of the so-called Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility will enable immediate disbursement of about $307.5 million for budget support in the East African nation, the Washington-based lender said Saturday in an emailed statement. “Kenya was hit hard at the onset by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the IMF said.

South Africa’s largest lender to farmers has delayed a debt restructuring deal with creditors because of conditions attached to a government bailout, forcing it to repay what it owes to Standard Chartered Plc, Bloomberg News reported. Land & Agricultural Development Bank said on Wednesday that a March 31 deadline to reach an agreement won’t be met. The government’s 7 billion rand ($474 million) commitment required “a material change” to previous versions of plans to deliver on the lender’s “development and transformation objective,” it said in response to emailed questions.

Chinese lending to African governments dropped by nearly a third in 2019 -- and probably continued to fall last year -- as a rising threat of defaults stemmed a deluge of credit from the country in the past decade, Bloomberg News reported. A study by Johns Hopkins University’s China-Africa Research Initiative showed that Chinese financing to Africa fell below $9 billion for the first time in nearly a decade in 2019, with Beijing refraining or reducing the size of loans to major borrowers such as Angola and Ethiopia.

Ghana’s planned Eurobond sale will be a key test of appetite for African issuers after a raft of nations sought debt relief, shaking investor confidence, Bloomberg News reported. Strong demand for the sale, which includes Africa’s first zero-coupon dollar bond, would encourage other African countries to tap international capital markets for money needed to roll over debt and finance strained budgets. That would also sidestep the need to seek debt relief and the questions that raises over market access, according to Gemcorp Capital LLP.

The administrators of South African Airways (SAA) hope to hand control of the business back to management by the end of the month, the state-owned airline said in a letter to affected parties seen by Reuters. SAA has been under a form of bankruptcy protection since December 2019, and its fortunes worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. All operations were mothballed in September 2020 when funds ran low. The letter, dated March 18, said SAA’s board of directors and management were working on a plan to resume flights, without giving a date when that might happen.

Unemployment in Africa’s largest economy surged to the second highest on a global list of countries monitored by Bloomberg. The jobless rate in Nigeria rose to 33.3% in the three months through December, according to a report published by National Bureau of Statistics on its website Monday. That’s up from 27.1% in the second quarter of 2020, the last period for which the agency released labor-force statistics.

Nigeria plans increased use of sovereign guarantees to fund infrastructure in a bid to reduce the need for raising debt for such projects, Bloomberg News reported. Africa’s largest economy will raise the value of these assurances to 5% of gross domestic product from 1.5% in 2019, Patience Oniha, head of the Debt Management Office, said at a conference in Lagos on Thursday. Nigeria’s public debt, including central bank overdrafts, as a proportion of GDP at 34.4% in 2020, is relatively low compared to peers.