Sub-Saharan Africa has natural resources that aids the development of renewable energy, it has lots of sun, plentiful wind, and much potentially sustainable biomass. With the development of small-scale affordable renewable energy technologies, such systems have been promoted by major aid agencies keen to prevent deforestation and excessive reliance on fossil fuels, that – even where they are plentiful, have not usually led to widespread economic development.

South Africa’s dairy sector has been dealing with a triple whammy of low economic growth, the Covid-19 pandemic, and a spate of unrest in July in parts of the country that caused major damage to retail outlets and the spoilage and wastage of up to 1 million litres of milk.…

The higher education system in Equatorial Guinea has been trying to move studies online because of Covid-19, but students still struggle to get computers and an affordable and fast Internet.  

It is hard to ignore the socio-economic backdrop of Equatorial Guinea, Africa’s only independent Spanish-speaking country, when assessing its higher education.…

Mozambique’s tobacco leaf and processing sector is facing tough times. Cyclones such as this January’s Eloise, and Idai in 2019 have wreaked significant damage on tobacco plantations. Covid-19 has caused processing disruption and harmed legitimate distribution, encouraging an increase in black market cigarette sales.…

IT is maybe not a common occurrence for the tobacco industry to find itself on the right side of judicial rulings, but in December, South Africa’s Western Cape High Court ruled that a four-and-a-half month national ban on sales of tobacco products, justified to prevent the spread of Covid-19, had been unconstitutional.…

Covid-19 has ripped through the economy of the Indian Ocean country Mauritius, but it has helped island business advisory agency managing director Sheila Ujoodha make her case to clients that risk assessments and contingency planning are important.

The owner of SmarTree Consulting (SCL) since she created the company in 2018, Ujoodha is busy suggesting how businesses can cope with the pandemic, through its services of internal audit, risk assessment and regulatory consulting.…

IF there was a sub-Saharan African country expected to steer a middle course between World Health Organisation (WHO) demands on smoking and protecting a stable and prosperous tobacco industry and market, it would surely be relatively wealthy Botswana – with an average per capital income in 2018 USD7,750.…

AFRICA is commonly hailed as the world’s next big focus of economic growth, but for the civil aviation industry, this prospect will require significant investment in new intra-African routes and related airport and ATC infrastructure. It will also require governments to remove immigration barriers preventing African air travellers flying to other countries on their home continent.…

Gosego Motsamai, the new managing partner and country manager at KPMG Botswana, has blazed a trail by being the first woman to secure such a post in a Big Four firm within this dynamic emerging market country.

With 23 years’ experience, Motsamai still brims with passion for the profession and often works late into the evening to ensure deadlines are met, a tidy habit she has developed from her early days as an accountant.…

Refugees have welcomed an international initiative at Gulu University, in northern Uganda, that is equipping them with skills on agribusiness and micro-enterprise development, helping them become financially independent.

Gulu is one of two African universities implementing the Mastercard Foundation-funded Transforming African Agricultural Universities project whose goal is meaningfully contributing to Africa’s growth and development.…