Search Results for: Nigeria

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

SECURITY specialists and risk assessors will be increasingly in demand within oil majors seeking to tap sub-Saharan Africa’s oil and gas riches in the next few years, experts say, with available resources and political uncertainty growing in an uneasy parallel.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE NIGERIAN government has been removed from a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) black-list of countries deemed not cooperating with the international community’s crackdown on money laundering. FATF’s ruling plenary was persuaded by Nigeria setting up a financial intelligence unit to detect money laundering and movements of terrorist finance, while securing prosecutions and convictions from criminal investigations into these offences, leading to.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

SUB-SAHARAN Africa’s biggest cotton producer Mali is mulling GM cotton trials, a development which could open up cheap cotton supplies for the textile and clothing trade.

But resistance from local farmers to high seed costs and tough times for existing GM cotton growers in South Africa – the only African country where GM is commercially grown – may mean that Africa’s potential as a key supplier is still some way off.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

CENTRAL bankers, drug barons, warlords, corporate bosses and small town crooks in Africa are all washing their money despite attempts by governments and international law enforcement agencies to bring them to book. But financial crime has never been as lucrative as now on the world’s poorest continent.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

THE FORTEEN countries of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) have their AML/CFT work cut out. Under-funded, lacking resources, short of political will and working in a region that leaks money like a sieve…it is a demanding context for the group’s daunting tasks.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

ONGOING recruitment of South African nurses to the UK is pushing South Africa’s already hard pressed public health system close to the brink of collapse and putting patient care at risk, the country’s lead nursing union and health experts have warned.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Oil and gas companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and at December 2005, MIGA had supported 13 oil and gas projects, with guarantees totalling US$707 million, with a standard leverage of five-to-one, so investments covered are actually five times larger.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE COUNTRIES of eastern and southern Africa pose two particularly serious challenges for the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the world’s leading anti money laundering agency, according to Alain Damais, the organisation’s executive secretary. In an interview with the Money Laundering Bulletin, he also discussed developments in money laundering typologies, the progress made by China towards becoming an FATF member and EU legislation designed to thwart laundering.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE ORGANISATION for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is predicting annual aid to the poorest countries will reach about US$130 billion by 2010, up US$50 billion from 2004. That said donor countries need to increase standard development spending to sustain an 2005-06 increase sparked by Iraq and Nigeria debt relief and Tsunami-linked emergency assistance.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BY KEITH NUTHALL

UNEP – RISK MANAGEMENT

A BOOK detailing practical ways in which governments can reduce the costs of dealing with major challenges such bird flu, terrorism and climate change has been released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).…