Blog - Afrikan Heroes

Ecobank Appoints Tomisin Fashina as Group Executive, Operations & Technology

April 8, 2021

Tomisin Fashina, new Group Executive for Operations & Technology at Ecobank

Tomisin Fashina has been tapped for the position of Group Executive for Operations & Technology at Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), parent company of the Ecobank Group, a position he will now hold in addition to his existing role of Managing Director of eProcess International.

Speaking on the appointment, Ade Ayeyemi, CEO Ecobank Group said that “The rapidly accelerating digital adoption by Africa’s citizenry and businesses, together with the explosion in ecommerce across the continent, is driving transformation throughout the banking and payment sectors. Winning across operations and technology is essential for the Ecobank Group’s short, medium and long-term success, and is an integral requirement of our ongoing determination to continue to meet the evolving expectations of our customers. Tomisin is well experienced to ensure this, and his new role provides him with an overarching view of our operations and technology functions.”

Tomisin who has over 30 years of experience, predominantly in technology management and financial services was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Steward Bank Harare Zimbabwe before joining Ecobank Group. He has also been Chief Executive Officer for Yookos, a social media company, and has held several positions at Barclays Bank, including General Manager & Head, Transactional Banking Products, and Channels Management and Director, Cash Management & Payments. Prior to this, at Citigroup South Africa, he held leadership roles in its Global Transaction Services as Division Head & Director, Client Delivery, sub-Saharan Africa; and Division Head, Electronic Banking & Implementation, sub-Saharan Africa.

Tomisin has a BSc degree in Computer Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University, a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from the University of Lagos and a PhD in Business Management in Leadership from Capella University, Minnesota, USA. Dr. Fashina succeeds Eddy Ogbogu as Group Executive, Operations & Technology, following Eddy’s recent retirement after serving the Group for 11 years.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Jobberman and USAID eTrade Alliance Profiles Behavior Patterns of 25,000 Young Nigerians

Sub-Saharan Africa single largest job placement website has announced that it has entered a partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Alliance for eTrade Development II (eTrade Alliance) to help drive the development of Nigeria’s thriving e-commerce industry. The #FindyourdigitalSuperpower campaign is set to conduct behavioral profiling on 25,000 young people aged 18-35 and 1,000 employees in the formal and informal e-commerce sector.

The Program according to Jobberman is to determine how to maximize the unique behavioral traits and skills required boosting the booming digital space. To this end, Jobberman will pilot technology on its platform that is designed to profile four categories of individuals in the e-commerce sector, in order to help large structured organizations and informal businesses optimize their talent.

Adding that the key indicators of these behavioral profiles will determine team developmental opportunities and gaps, understanding of team dynamics, adapted hiring processes for improved workplace productivity and discovering hidden talents within existing employees. The goal is to create an industry of streamlined successful roles that can be matched against the profiles established in the behavioral analysis.

E-commerce spending in Nigeria is set to reach US$6.1m by the end of 2021 and as more consumers navigate to online shopping due to the pandemic, spending is projected to hit US$9.5m in revenues by 2025. The fast-growing youth population, which makes up half of the country’s total population, is expected to power the digital marketplace with close to two million joining the labor force per year. The Jobberman and the USAID eTrade Alliance partnership is geared to ready the labor market for such growth by identifying strengths and developmental opportunities within the sector, providing the benchmark and supporting resources to allow its potential to be realized.

The CEO OF Jobberman Nigeria Rolake Rosiji says “We are excited to be collaborating with the eTrade Alliance on this timely campaign which is very much in line with our initiatives to advance the digital landscape of Nigeria.

The emerging e-commerce industry sums up the entrepreneurial energy of Nigerians, which this campaign will build on; by using our innovative technology to transform businesses from a talent perspective. We are looking forward to seeing the results from the behavioral profiling exercise, which will help to enhance business transformation, especially for digital SMEs.”

eTrade Alliance Project Director Anne Szender echoed Ms. Rosiji’s sentiments stating, “the USAID eTrade Alliance is excited by this opportunity to leverage the skills and expertise of our Alliance partner Jobberman to improve labor market matching in the fast growing digital commerce sector.

Through this innovative pilot we will gain insight into the key traits and skills that are critical for workers in the digital commerce space; information which can inform the design of future workforce development and job matching programs, creating long-term economic impacts for job seekers, SMEs, and their communities.”

ROAM Africa’s Director of Partnerships, Impact Projects Reshma Bharmal Shariff added. “I am very excited for the launch of the “Find Your Digital Super Power” project. This initiative will provide participants a competitive edge to attain their aspirations in this digital economy.

Our aim at Roam Africa is to “connect Africans to opportunities” and our partnership with eTrade Alliance for this campaign epitomizes our value of being an impact partner in the economic development of the markets we operate in.”

With over a decade in the recruitment business, Jobberman has used its platform to develop job seeker skill sets and identify gaps in the labor market. The partnership with the USAID eTrade Alliance reinforces Jobberman’s efforts to empower individuals across Nigeria with the training and skills they need to succeed.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Nokia and Lenovo Settles Battle Over Patent

Nokia, one of the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker and Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker have jointly announced that they have settled their squabble over patents as the terms of the cross-license agreement remain confidential adding that Lenovo will make a net balancing payment to Nokia, the Finnish telecom equipment maker said. Both equally agreed to resolve all pending litigation across all jurisdictions, the companies said.

It could be recalled that Nokia launched its legal battle against Lenovo in 2019 over alleged infringement of 20 video-compression technology patents and had cases in the United States, Brazil and India, in addition to six cases in Germany. Lenovo on the other hand sued Nokia in a court in California.

A Munich court ruled in September that Lenovo infringed one of Nokia’s patents, and it ordered an injunction and a recall of products from retailers. The order was stayed in November by a German appeals court.

“The global accord struck will enable future collaboration between our companies for the benefit of customers worldwide,” said John Mulgrew, chief intellectual property officer of Lenovo. Nokia’s patent portfolio is composed of around 20,000 patent families, including over 3,500 patent families declared essential to the 5G technology standard.

In March, Nokia struck a deal with Samsung to license patents covering its innovations in video standards. Its Scandinavian rival, Ericsson, has also got ongoing patent disputes with Samsung and KPN NV, the largest Dutch telecommunications company.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Google extends Policy on Storage Limit till February 2022

Global tech giant, Google has said that every day, files with sizes of more than 4.3 million gigabytes are added across its products like Drive, Gmail and Photos straining existing capacity and also pushing it to look for more innovative ways to manage the challenge. This was responsible for the announcement late last year by Google that 15GB is the storage càp for G Suite (now called Google Workspace).

But in a new twist, the tech giant has reversed itself by postponing its planned policy aimed at counting some of its products including Sheets, Forms, Docs, Slides created by users of Workspace to February 2022. This planned update also included Google Photos too with the changes to take effect from Tuesday, June 1, 2021. However, Google announced a delay on the proposed update to affect only Docs and similar productivity tools.

This delay in no way affects the update on Google Photos because from June 1 as earlier stated, users won’t be permitted to keep high-resolution images for free. According to its blog post comment, Google reveals that: “Any newly created Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, or Jamboard files will count toward storage. Existing files within these products will not count toward storage, unless they’re modified on or after February 1, 2022,”

Presently, G Suite products don’t impact cloud storage space, but the tech giant has however decided to stop the benefits so as to make space for an increase in demand for its online tools. Only users with G Suite and Google Workspace accounts will enjoy this delay. Owning a personal Google account doesn’t make you qualify for this delayed update.

So as it stands, G Suite products files created through personal accounts will have their 15GB storage capacity counted for from June 1.

The blog post also reads that the delay with the policy is a result of trying to empower the adaptability of its Workspace admins. By the implementation, the admins will be able to optimize their storage capacity ahead of the new proposed date.

The tech giant will also offer new tools for the admins to support Enterprise customers in identifying and managing storage usage and its allocation before implementing the policy.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Egypt’s Paymob Raises $18.5m Series A, Highest Ever For A Fintech Startup

Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob Founders

Cairo-based fintech Paymob has raised $18.5 million in a Series A round led by Global Ventures, the company announced today. The round is made up of $15 million in glowing funding and $3.5 million that was paid out in July 2020 as the first tranche. A15 and FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, were also involved in the transaction. It is Egypt’s largest-ever Series A round raised by a fintech company.

“We couldn’t be more excited for Paymob’s next step of growth; the business probability in the location is unprecedented,” said Islam Shawky, co-founder and CEO of Paymob. The wide digital repayments gap still remains, and we are thrilled to be collaborating with forward-thinking regulators to address it.”
Read also:Ivory Coast-based Fintech Startup HUB2 Raises $1.8m To Fasten Growth In African Markets

“This new capital raise would accelerate our progress in reducing the digital payments bottleneck. All of our current merchants have increased their shares, and we thank them all for their support and confidence in our industrial company model and execution track record,” he said.

Here Is What You Need To Know

With the influx of cash, the company plans to accelerate its expansion into Saudi Arabia and other regional markets this year. It would also put the funds into expanding its regional carrier business and expanding its product line.

All investors in this round had previously participated in the startup’s $3.5m part Series A fundraise last year.

Why The Investors Invested

Global Ventures is a Dubai-based VC led by Noor Sweid who was previously a managing partner at Beirut-based Leap Ventures and most recently Chief Investment Officer of Dubai Future Foundation, and Basil Moftah, the former president of Intellectual Property & Science at Thomson Reuters. He had led the acquisition of Zawya for Thomson Reuters and exited a $1 billion revenue division of Thomson Reuters to a private equity firm in 2016 for $3.55 billion. The firm generally invests in revenue-generating startups (with at least $1 million in annual revenue) across Middle East & Africa but has made few exceptions. On its website, Global Venture says that they’re looking for startups that are revenue-generating, industry winners, capital-efficient, immensely scalable and have a clear path to exit.

Basil Moftah, General Partner of Global Ventures, said, “We are delighted to lead this momentous fintech fundraise in the region. Paymob has a best mixture of a extraordinarily acceptable technology, a product customers more and increased can not do without, and an top notch administration team. Their market possibility is in addition huge; Egypt’s transformation to a cashless society is being enabled with the useful aid of way of the unique merchandise Paymob has built. We show up ahead to persevering with assisting their expansion
Read also:These Payments Companies Are Now Allowed To Carry Out International Money Transfer In Nigeria

Established in 1970, FMO is 51-percent held by the Dutch government and 49-percent by private sector institutions. The development finance institution works toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by funding capacity development as well as placing debt and equity investments in sectors such as agribusiness, financial institutions, and energy. During the six months ending June 2020, FMO lost EUR 280 million (USD 330 million) on a total portfolio of EUR 12.7 billion (USD 14.9 billion).

A15 is an Amsterdam-based Middle East and Africa-focused venture capital company that invests in digital products and technology brands. The VC had, in October last year, made a six-figure investment in Cairo-based community-inspired startup, Milango.

A Look At What Paymob Does

Founded by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob is an infrastructure technology enabler providing payment solutions to empower digital financial service providers across Africa and the Middle East through mobile wallet technology. The startup offers a variety of products and APIs that enable online and offline businesses to receive and send payments. The merchants can without difficulty integrate Paymob’s payment APIs into their websites or mobile applications to collect payments from their customers using first-rate fee strategies such as cards, mobile wallets, and cash on delivery.

The startup said in a statement that revenue for its charge acceptance commercial enterprise enterprise increased by more than 5 times in 2020, with its research now being used by over 35,000 nearby and global shops like Swvl, LG, Samsonite, and the American University in Cairo. To date, the startup claims to have processed repayments of more than $5 billion.

The startup’s mobile wallet infrastructure processes more than 85 per cent of the market share of the transaction’s throughput in the Egyptian market, and serves merchants across five different markets, including Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine, and serving millions of customers on a monthly basis.

Chief operating officer El-Hajj said Paymob’s merchants and partners would benefit directly from the funding as Paymob will ramp up investments in its core payments offering to better serve its existing base and cater for the increasing demand.

“Empowering our merchants and partners networks in Egypt and Africa has and will always be at the heart and core of what we do at Paymob,” he said.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

Paymob Series A Paymob Series A Paymob Series A

How Can Foreign Remittance Companies Partner With Local Fintech Startups In Ghana, Without Physical Presence?

Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Ernest Addison

Foreign remittance companies desiring to partner with fintech startups in Ghana will derive their motivation from the fact that West Africa — especially Nigeria and Ghana — is the hotbed of international remittances in Africa. In 2019, before the coronavirus shawled the world, Nigeria was Africa’s largest recipient of remittance flows with $23.8 billion followed by Ghana ($3.5 billion), with Kenya receiving $2.8 billion, even though Ghana is the 14th most populated country in Africa, behind countries like Egypt, South Africa, etc.

However, while it may be difficult to explore the Nigerian remittance market as a foreign fintech company — given the country’s central bank’s recent policies against international remittance platforms — it is relatively easier to launch presence in Ghana as a foreign remittance company.

Zeepay, one of Ghana’s money transfer services recently announced a partnership with Transfast, a Mastercard company and cross-border payments service provider. The partnership will enable consumers around the world to send money directly to more than 20 million mobile money wallets in Ghana.

Here Is What You Need To Know

Partnering With Local Fintechs

Currently, according to Bank of Ghana’s rules on foreign remittances, the only way foreign money transfer companies can partner with local fintechs in Ghana for remittance services without establishing any physical presence is by partnering with either of the two types of fintech license holders:

1) Dedicated Electronic Money Issuers (DEMIs); and

2) Enhanced Payment Service Providers (EPSPs).

A Dedicated Electronic Money Issuers (DEMI) in Ghana is an fintech company licensed under Section 24 of Ghana’s Payment Systems and Services Act of 2019. Generally, a DEMI exists to offer electronic money services. The license is relatively new in the country with Zeepay picking up the first ever DEMI license just recently in 2020. As of now, only about 5 fintech companies have the license in Ghana —that is, apart from Zeepay, Airtel Mobile, Vodafone Mobile, others are GCB G-Money and Yup Ghana Limited.

On the other hand, an Enhanced Payment Service Provider license offers a wider range of benefits, including but not limited to ability to support provision of services including electronic funds transfer, facilitation of interoperability of payment systems and services. It also allows a company to embark on the provision of services such as supporting the payment system aggregation, provision of electronic platforms for payment or receipt of funds, and the provision of technological services to facilitate switching, routing, clearing and data management. The Bank of Ghana, also, most recently released a list of 18 approved Enhanced Payment Service Providers, although the country’s first ever payment service provider license was given to Nsano Limited only in May 2020.

The implication of the above is that partnerships with local fintechs are relatively at their early stages in the west African country.

What Must A Foreign Fintech Company Do To Establish Partnership With A Local Fintech?

Generally, there is no limit to the number of foreign fintech companies a local fintech company can partner with, but for every of such partnerships to be approved by the Bank of Ghana, the following conditions must be met:

The foreign fintech company must have been in existence for not less than three years and must have been licensed by its country of registration to carry out international money transfer services. In other words, the company must be well established in the business of money transfer, especially in terms of volume and value of transactions, number of countries of operation as well as number of customers served.

The foreign company must enter into a formal partnership agreement with the local fintech company. This is usually done by signing a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the local company. The SLA must thoroughly detail all the services to be provided under the agreement.

The foreign fintech company must also submit notarised declarations that its directors have not been directly concerned in the management of any licensed institutions, the license of which has been revoked.

The foregin fintech company must also submit notarised declarations that its directors or shareholders have not been indicted for offences related to illegal conduct, inappropriate business practices, financial loss due to dishonesty, incompetence, malpractice, or involved in business practices which are deceitful, oppressive or otherwise improper (whether unlawful or not).

The foreign fintech company must not come from a country which does not implement and enforce Anti-Money Laundering /Combating the Financing of Terrorism frameworks in line with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations and which must not have come under adverse findings from mutual evaluation report or cited for AML/CFT infringement.

The foreign fintech company must also provide evidence of adequate data protection policies in place as well as evidence of compliance with international best practices. In this regard, a data protection certificate may serve.

How Long Does It Take To Get Regulatory Approval For Such Partnerships?

According to the Bank of Ghana, it takes ninety (90) days — following receipt of a complete application or where further information has been required, after receipt of the information — to grant or refuse the partnership. The country’s Head of the FinTech and Innovation Office of the Bank of Ghana approves or refuses the approval of such partnerships.

For more on what is required of a partner local fintech company before the partnership can be approved, click here.

Institution	Licence Type

Airtel Mobile Commerce (Ghana) Limited	Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer
GCB G-Money	Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer
Yup Ghana Limited	Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer
Vodafone Mobile Financial Services Limited	Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer
Zeepay Ghana Limited	Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer
AppsNmobile Solutions Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Bsystems Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Cellulant Ghana Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Dreamoval Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Emergent Payments Ghana Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Etranzact Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
ExpressPay Ghana Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Fast Pace Transfer Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Global Accelerex Ghana Ltd	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Halges Financial Technologies Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Hubtel Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
IT Consortium Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
MFS Ghana Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Moolre Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Nfortics Ghana Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Nsano Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
PaySwitch Ghana Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Transsnet Payments Ghana Limited	Payment Service Provider Enhanced
Techfin Innovations Ltd	Payment Service Provider Medium
ZappGhana Limited	Payment Service Provider Medium
Titan Payment Systems	Payment Service Provider Standard

List Of Approved Electronic Money Issuers And Payment Service Providers In Ghana as at 1st April, 2021.

fintech foreign partner Ghana fintech foreign partner Ghana fintech foreign partner Ghana

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

TikTok Seals New Artist Licensing Agreement For Several Territories In Africa

TikTok is not yet done with Africa and continues to forge strategic alliances on the continent. The ByteDance subsidiary recently entered into a licensing agreement with the Southern African Music Rights Organization and the Composers Authors and Publishers Association. The agreement is multi-year and covers 58 territories. It provides for the payment of royalties to South African songwriters, composers and music publishers. This is for every time their music is used on the video sharing social network. The revenue potential is huge as TikTok has an audience of around 6 million people in South Africa.

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with TikTok to ensure that Pan-African songwriters are supported on the platform. With the growing focus on African music, more and more African songwriters are on the verge of achieving global superstar status and TikTok will play a major role in showcasing their talents to the world,” Wiseman Ngubo, the association’s chief operating officer said.

Royalties on TikTok are calculated on a pro rata share of the available pool. In other words, they are determined by a person’s market share and usage, during each period. The agreement does not provide for a fixed rate per broadcast.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

TikTok agreement Africa TikTok agreement Africa

Sparkle Business Launches Mobile App to Support SMEs in Nigeria

April 7, 2021

Nigeria’s leading mobile financial firm Sparkle, a mobile-first digital ecosystem providing financial, lifestyle and business support services to Nigerians across the globe, has launched Sparkle Business. This new app is an addition to the existing Sparkle mobile application, to help small businesses and SMEs access the much-needed products and services to grow their enterprises digitally.

The new Sparkle Business features include an Inventory and Invoice Management with aim to help businesses maintain control over their payment requests and overall operations.

Also included in the app is a Payment Gateway Service to manage single and bulk payments more seamlessly, a Tax Advisory/Calculations to help evaluate business turnover and calculate tax filings, and a Payroll/Employee Management to manage employee payments and benefits effectively without error or human interventions, and much more.

The platform has been designed with mobile-first, digital native entrepreneurs and companies in mind, who need to run all aspects of their enterprises, at the touch of a button.

Since its launch in 2020, Sparkle has grown a community built on trust and transparency, helping thousands to experience a new, easy, stress-free approach to organizing their finances.

In Nigeria, SMEs contribute 48% of national GDP, account for 96% of businesses and 84% of employment, however they often face challenges with making strategic decisions due to lack of data for key insights into important issues that affect their business.

Built by the Sparkle team to support Nigeria’s millions of SMEs as they scale, Sparkle Business will bring all essential business transactions onto one safe and simple to use platform.

Commenting on the launch, Uzoma Dozie, Founder and CEO of Sparkle, said, “SMEs are the largest employer of labour in Nigeria but are lacking access to basic services that will help their businesses.

We have introduced Sparkle Business as a one stop shop, to help individuals to launch their businesses digitally, while meeting existing SMEs’ pain points, and allowing them to pivot to the next level of success. We have been afforded this opportunity due to our extensive research and access to data, which allows us to know what exactly SMEs are looking for.

We are truly excited about the initial results from the beta test and are looking forward to impactful results for small businesses in the near future.”

Sparkle Business is live now and can be accessed by current Sparkle users who have registered businesses in Nigeria. To register, individuals will need to have a personal Sparkle account, Tax Identification Number [TIN], and an email address connected to their TIN.

Uzoma, having worked in retail banking for over 20 years, has unrivalled experience when it comes to building banking products for businesses. He adds, “Sparkle was built to allow individuals to be free; Sparkle Business is an extension of this, so that business owners can reduce friction when it comes to important administrative transactions.

“We’re excited to roll out our new products and services and to continue to grow an increasingly busy and entrepreneurial group of business owners who don’t want to accept that banking halls and physical paper trails are the only means of conducting business in Nigeria”.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Ghana Raises $3bn in Eurobond sale, confounding Skeptics

Ghana has confounded skeptics by proving that it can still access international debt markets by raising $3bn in late March. The government aims to borrow a total $5bn from markets this year, but the fact that the government’s interest costs are close to 50% of its revenue has led to analyst skepticism it can reach the target.

Yet, in a global context of low interest rates and ample liquidity, the March eurobond sale – the issuing of bonds in a foreign currency – was subscribed twice over. Among the bonds sold were four-year zero-coupon bonds, which raised $525m and showed that some investors are even willing to lend to Ghana without interest.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Applications Open for Microsoft Interns4Afrika Internship 2021

Organisers of the Microsoft Interns4Afrika Internship program have announced the opening of applications for the program which was launched by Microsoft4Afrika five years ago in response to demand from within its partner population and operates across the Middle East and Africa regions. The Program offers talented young people 6 months of full-time work with a Microsoft partner organization, working on real projects, providing a kick start to future careers in sales, marketing or technology.

The host organizations are Microsoft Partners that come from within the Microsoft ecosystem in the private, public and non-profit sectors.

To be eligible for the Internship, applicants must be willing and ready to commit to completing a full-time internship in six months and should at the time of the commencement of the Program have graduated with an undergraduate or postgraduate degree within the last three years. They should have a BA/BSc in a business-related or IT degree. Applicants should be a citizen or have a permit to work in the country you are currently located in.

Interns4Afrika supports host organizations with the cost of recruitment, onboarding, skilling and Microsoft Certification of their potential next-generation employees. The program empowers local communities by investing in local graduates and local partners, providing real employment opportunities to young Middle Eastern and African talent to build a better future for the continent. All African countries are eligible to apply and selected applicants are entitled to a monthly salary.

Interested individuals in the Microsoft Interns4Afrika internship can go ahead to apply at https://www.microsoft.com/africa/4afrika/interns4afrika.aspx. The deadline for application is Wednesday, June 30, 2021.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry