Long reads on African history, governance, economics, culture, and what comes next.
The East African Community's Common External Tariff (CET), revised in 2022 to introduce a fourth tariff band at 35% for finished goods, is the most consequential trade-policy instrument …
Every SADC country except South Africa has run a fertilizer subsidy programme in the last fifteen years. Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) is the longest-running and most …
ECOWAS leaders adopted, in 2000, a plan for a single West African currency — the *Eco* — to be introduced by 2003. The plan was delayed to 2005, …
The eNaira launched in October 2021 as the first African central bank digital currency (CBDC), positioning Nigeria as a global pioneer alongside Bahamas's Sand Dollar (2020) and ahead …
Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023 inheriting a Naira regime with multiple official rates, a Central Bank of Nigeria parallel-market premium of roughly 60%, and an external …
Lesetja Kganyago, governor of the South African Reserve Bank from November 2014 through his second term ending in 2024 (with the third term commencing under expected continuity), has …
The Igbo apprenticeship system (*Igba-Boi* or *Imu-Ahia*) is the longest-running, largest-scale informal mass entrepreneurship programme in any African economy. A boy or young man (traditionally) is placed with …
Between March 2022 and March 2024, the Egyptian pound, Nigerian naira, and Ghanaian cedi each lost between 45% and 70% of their value against the US dollar in …
The EU Battery Regulation 2023/1542, which entered force in August 2023 with due-diligence reporting requirements phasing in from 2025–2027, requires downstream battery manufacturers selling into the EU market …
Zimbabwe holds the second-largest platinum group metals (PGM) reserve globally after South Africa, concentrated in the Great Dyke geological formation running north-south through the central Mashonaland West and …
Kenya's dairy sector is one of the more revealing case studies in African agribusiness consolidation. The Kenya Cooperative Creameries (KCC), founded in 1925 as a settler-farmer cooperative, was …
African sovereign Eurobond issuance recovered substantially in 2024 after the 2022–2023 drought, with Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Kenya, and Senegal returning to international capital markets. The yield curve that …