Business Day, by Dianna Games, 22 April 2013 ON A trip to Port Harcourt in Nigeria last week, I spent half of my time in traffic jams. This gave me plenty of opportunity to survey the teeming streets and consider the virtues of the urbanisation a new crop of Africa experts extols. Port Harcourt, the [...]

Business Day – By Dianna Games, 8 April 2013 IN DAYS gone by, knowing the president of an African country, or having a business contact who did, was generally regarded as being the key that would unlock lucrative business deals. The next best thing was being close to a minister who could allow you to [...]

Business Day – by Dianna Games, 25 March 2013 TALES of intrigue and political skulduggery are unravelling fast and furiously in the streets of Harare, focused on the country’s indigenisation programme. The saga has been dubbed “Nieebgate”, a reference to the acronym for the National Indigenisation Economic Empowerment Board (Nieeb) driving the programme under the [...]

Business Day – by Dianna Games, 11 March 2013 FOR all the talk of Africa as the last frontier for global food production, its share of exports in one of its key potential growth areas — agriculture — has fallen, despite strong economic growth in many countries. According to a report released by the World [...]

Business Day – by Dianna Games, 25 February 2013 THE waters of the Gulf of Guinea lap at the shores of some of the most resource-rich countries on Earth. Coffee, iron ore, gold and, importantly, oil are regularly shipped to the rest of the world from the countries that line this body of water, stretching [...]

Business Day by Dianna Games, 11 February 2013 ARE African countries really doing so badly out of the mining boom? Surveys have shown them to be major beneficiaries of mining taking place in their countries. Although they take no risk and don’t participate in any of the high-cost upfront costs, they are quick to hover [...]

Business Day – 28 January 2013 – Dianna Games DRIVING through Lubumbashi, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining capital, it is difficult to believe more than $10bn of investment has flowed into the area recently. The Congo’s fastest-growing city has become the victim of rampant urbanisation, with its population nearly doubling in a decade. It [...]

THE thing that struck me on my first visit to Goma, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a few years ago was its beautiful location on the edge of Lake Kivu. Opulent resorts, restaurants and homes with verdant green lawns and banks of tropical plants line the lakeshore. But just a few streets inland, the [...]

Business Day – Dianna Games ONE of South Africa’s early pioneers on the continent, MultiChoice, found a major challenge to be a shortage of skills in markets where few had experience of working for large corporations. And as quickly as they built up skills, other multinationals entering these markets snapped them up. In the book [...]

Business Day – Dianna Games A FORMER trade union leader in Nigeria (now a politician) once said Nigeria would never realise its potential of becoming a world-class economy if it had to rely on candles and generators to get there. The hum of generators is as much a feature of life in Nigeria as powdered [...]