Search Results for: South Africa

The textile and fibre sectors of Ethiopia have been looking to expand domestic sakes as Ethiopia approaches one year anniversary of its exclusion of the USA’s Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This process continues even as a new peace deal between the government and rebel Tigray forces is being rolled out, growing hope that Ethiopia may be readmitted to AGOA and its preferential US market access in 2023.…

An African garment and textile sector rebounding from the Covid-19 pandemic has seen strong export growth in the first three-quarters of 2022 start to sputter through a tightening of retail demand in Europe and the United States. These remain Africa’s two primary export markets and their consumers are reducing spending as inflation and recession concerns grow.…

The African knitwear manufacturing sector has been regaining ground lost during the Covid-19 pandemic, with established manufacturing hubs capitalising on the growing demand for nearshoring in Europe and to a lesser extent the USA. There are major investments under way in developing production capacity, particularly in West Africa.…

The Egyptian garment and textile sector has rebounded from the dip caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with orders returning in 2021 and exports strong in the first half of 2022. Sluggish consumer demand in the country’s primary export markets of the USA and Europe has however seen orders weaken over the past third 2022 quarter.…

Cape Verde universities are facing their first complete scientific and institutional assessment, undertaken by a recently created Higher Education Regulatory Agency (Agência Reguladora do Ensino Superior – ARES) to improve the quality of higher education in the island country, about 500km west of Senegal.…

Egyptian knitwear manufacturers have profited from strong international demand over the past two years, being able to tap into the diversification and nearshoring trend of US and European buyers wanting to avoid over-reliance on Asian sourcing, especially in China. However, export sales have slowed since the summer as consumer sentiment has weakened in key overseas markets, which has caused a hiatus in further investment by some manufacturers.…

How to launder a sack of ill-gotten cash is a question that does not just stretch the imaginations of law enforcers and AML officers, it can and does prompt useful assessments by professionals in other fields.

The question of how to launder USD1 million in dirty money is, for instance, a popular thread on the international online Q&A service Quora, with 84 answers.…

As Ethiopia approaches the one-year anniversary since the USA’s Biden administration suspended the country from its African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) privileges over human rights abuses, a senior union leader hopes these rights will be restored in 2023. (1)

With the Ethiopian and rebel Tigray governments agreeing a ceasefire last week (Nov 2), to forge a long-term peace following two years’ armed conflict, Kassahun Follo, president of the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions (CETU), an alliance of trade unions, said the AGOA expulsion led to a loss of more than 5,600 jobs in Ethiopia’s flagship Hawassa Industrial Park alone – a key textile and clothing manufacturing hub.…

New Zealand has been harvesting quality fibre from brushtail possums for decades, however, a new government native species conservation plan means the industry – in NZ at least – may have limited time to survive.

The animals, native to Australia, have caused considerable environmental damage across the Tasman Sea in NZ since their introduction in the 1830s.…

High value banknotes remain of concern to AML regulators, even though they are increasingly being withdrawn from circulation. Despite the growth of electronic payments, the amount of physical cash in circulation remains huge. The USD remains the currency that circulates most widely in the world, with the US Currency Education Programme (a Federal Reserve scheme) saying that there was USD2 trillion in circulation by the start of 2021 (December 31, 2020).…