Blog

FDI

South African imports from Africa have grown by a multiple of five to 12% of total imports since 1995 and its exports to the continent have almost doubled from 14% to 27% of total exports over the same period, positioning it second only to Asia as the major exporter to the continent.  As such it is interesting that Who Owns Whom has recently had a number of report requests on the food and beverage, telecoms and energy industries in Angola, Eswatini, Kenya, and Mozambique.

Liberia

The effects of a long civil war, an Ebola crisis from 2014 to 2016 and the subsequent withdrawal of peacekeeping forces and aid continue to weigh heavily on the Liberian economy. Estimates of the country’s GDP, and its growth outlook, vary widely. African Development Bank figures indicate GDP growth was an estimated 3.2% in 2018, from 2.5% in 2017, driven largely by growth in mining and manufacturing.

Human health and social work activitiesSouth Africa

Who Owns Whom’s MD Andrew McGregor believes South Africa needs to have tough conversations about labour broking if it wants to change direction on inequality.

Other service activitiesSouth Africa

Murky ownership details give crooks places to hide Companies profiled by Who Owns Whom researchers are allocated a transparency rating based on their willingness to disclose information about themselves, from 1 (opaque) to 10 (fully transparent). Of the 15,241 active companies on file, 32.76% scored above 6. While this is a material percentage, it indicates that we still have some way to go to convince our business community that transparency is more conducive to a functional society than secrecy.

Nigeria

Economic growth in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, remains slow and way off the overly-optimistic expectations of its 2017 economic recovery and growth plan. The country, which is negotiating World Bank funding in the region of US$2.5bn, the second tranche in as many years, remains highly dependent on agriculture and oil, which played into its languid GDP growth of 1.94% in the quarter to June, from 2.1% and 2.46% in the previous two quarters.

Mozambique

There are causes for optimism about Mozambique’s political and economic future due partly to a recent peace accord with opposition Renamo ahead of the country’s October election and partly to the announcement of several major projects following the discovery of huge deposits of natural gas. African Development Bank figures show Mozambique’s GDP growth was 3.5% in 2018, down sharply from the average of 7% from 2004 to 2015, mainly because of the steep decline in public and foreign investment.

Zambia

Zambia’s economy is holding steady despite the massive drop in agricultural output in 2018. But political and economic challenges weigh heavily on the country. World Bank figures estimated Zambia’s 2018 GDP growth at 3.5% while the African Development Bank estimated economic growth at 4.0% in 2018, compared with 4.1% in 2017. It said that agricultural output fell more than 35% in 2018 due to poor rainfall, although copper production and construction contributed positively to growth.

Other service activitiesSouth Africa

How are we going to uplift the unacceptable levels of vulnerable people in our society? The Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy was designed to redress the economic imbalance caused by...