Via Quartz, an article on MTN Nigeria’s move into formal banking: The fledgling mobile money market in Nigeria is about to get a major shake-up. MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest telecoms operator, has been granted a “super agent” license which allows it set up an agent network through which it can provide financial services. It’s the first […]
Read more »Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, a report on Blackstone’s decision to pull back from a pledge to invest $2.5 billion through an African infrastructure company called Black Rhino: Blackstone Group , BX -0.50% the world’s largest private-equity firm, has pulled back on a plan to invest billions of dollars across Africa, the latest U.S. investor to temper its ambitions […]
Read more »Courtesy of Barron’s, an interesting look at the Next 11: On a recent holiday in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, I couldn’t resist thinking about these countries’ economic potential and ongoing policy challenges. After all, in 2005 my Goldman Sachs colleagues and I had listed Vietnam as one of the Next Eleven, or N-11, all countries […]
Read more »Via the Wall Street Journal, a report on how mobile operators are navigating changing regulatory environment and network issues in Nigeria: The prospects for mobile-phone growth in Nigeria are among the most lucrative for telecom operators globally, but also the most challenging. Only some 45% of the approximately 192 million people in Africa’s most populous […]
Read more »Via the World Economic Forum, commentary on the top 10 emerging markets of the future: A new report from BMI Research has identified the “10 emerging markets of the future” — the countries that are set to become new drivers of economic growth over the next 10 years. BMI estimates that these countries will cumulatively […]
Read more »Via Foreign Policy, interesting observations on how the decrease in oil prices is setting off a dramatic shift in the economic balance of power on the African continent: Africa’s petrostates are crashing hard. A cool $115 in the summer of 2014, a barrel of Brent crude, the international pricing benchmark, now fetches below $40. And […]
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