THERE are celebrations taking place across Africa this year — and they have nothing to do with soccer. In 1960, 17 African countries gained their independence from colonial rule; this year marks the 50th anniversary of these momentous events.
The landmark occasion has been celebrated with parades, parties, football games, dancing, public speeches and publications glorifying [...]

IN 1993, Equity Building Society in Kenya was declared technically insolvent; in 2010 it is a fully fledged bank, listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange and claims more than half of Kenya’s banked population as its customers.  In 2006 alone, its customer base grew 82,5% and its deposits grow 80% a year. What is the secret [...]

A MINISTER in an African country that shall remain nameless was relating his experience of joining the government from the private sector at a dinner at a recent African business conference. He said the need to observe official protocol was one of the biggest challenges of transferring from an environment of informality in business to [...]

ARE South African companies damaging relationships with other African countries by not playing by the rules? 

EMMANUEL Munyukwi, CE of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE), has had a stressful time during Zimbabwe’s lost decade — keeping interest alive in a stock market increasingly disconnected from the rest of the world. Hyperinflation, peaking far north of the last official rate of 231-million percent, a government driven by political expedience and a currency [...]

It is  not every day I get cajoled to sing happy birthday to President Robert Mugabe.
The old man, guest of honour at an African tourism conference in Harare last week, looked pleased as the praise singers that surrounded him (otherwise known as government officials) cranked out the ‘happy birthday’ tune to mark his 86th birthday, [...]

IN 2008, after months of delays, the Zambian government finally gave in to public pressure to capture a greater share of profits from the commodity boom by introducing a windfall tax on minerals, raising mining royalties and hiking corporate taxes.
The measures, which came into effect in the April 2008 national budget, raised the effective tax [...]

OFFICIAL discussions about how to manage traffic and people through Africa’s busiest border post — Beitbridge — have been going on for at least a decade. And yet, every major holiday begets horror stories about the experience of trying to move through this border crossing. This past Christmas season was no exception. In fact, with [...]

SABMILLER ’s two main competitors in Nigeria, Guinness and Heineken, make nearly as much in that market as SA’s brewing giant makes in 24 other African countries, excluding SA.
This startling fact was disclosed by an SABMiller Africa executive at a recent SA-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce event. He maintains that for all the challenges of the [...]

Business Day / Published: 26 October 2009
A GREEN revolution, like any other revolution, takes real leadership; it requires an acknowledgement that food production is a life-and-death matter, a Vietnamese academic told an agricultural conference I attended in Hanoi last week.
Feeding a nation was not possible without a clear and decisive strategy, he said. Vietnam has [...]