First Independent Mena Newspaper
The administration of President Patrice Talon of Benin has unveiled the 2023 budget put at around $4.5 billion, up from $4.4 billion the previous year. The cabinet also forecasts 6.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Growth (GDP) for the same year, a little higher than the 6 per cent attained last year. The government forecasts […]
U.S. Agency for International Development and the International NGO GiveDirectly are providing an additional $4 million to support Moroccan agricultural cooperatives suffering from recent economic shocks, including the Covid-19 pandemic, drought, inflation, and a global food crisis sparked by the Russia-Ukraine crisis. At the end of September, the U.S. Congress approved $2 million for a […]
Axel Van Trotsenburg, World Bank Managing Director of Operations Wednesday called on Tunisia to carry out crucial fiscal reforms which he claimed will put the North African country on development trajectory. “These reforms are equally important for the population,” Trotsenburg said in a tweet following a meeting with Tunisia’s Ministers of Planning and Finance. The […]
Cairo-based fintech startup, Telda, has landed $20 million in seeding funding from several investors including Jack Dorsey, former Twitter Chief Executive Officer, Bloomberg reports. The seed fund will serve the expansion into new markets. Telda also plans to use the money to build its product offering. “In Egypt dealing with money is still a complicated […]
The Spanish Council of Ministers approved, on Wednesday, an agreement to grant a loan of up to 20 million euros to the Fund for the financing of microfinance organizations in Morocco, Jaïda. The loan, granted through the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), aims to finance the expansion of the Jaïda Fund portfolio. ”The […]
With many Africans using cryptocurrencies for everyday transactions rather than speculation, cryptocurrency market across Africa grew by over 1200% between 2020 and 2021, and its usage remains high in 2022 despite the ongoing difficult bear market. 2022 has been a very difficult year for digital asset and cryptocurrency markets when the value of many major […]
Debt restructuring efforts for Chad and Zambia could be completed by the end of the year, which would pave the way for more countries to seek help, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said. Speaking with civil society groups at the start of the annual IMF and World Bank meetings, Georgieva said a […]
Morocco’s economic growth is expected to slow down to 0.8% in 2022 due to adverse international juncture and rebound to 3.1% the following year, says the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its latest World economic outlook. Inflation is expected to reach in the country 6.2% this year before decreasing to 4.1% in 2023, adds the […]
The economies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are expected to grow by 5.5% this year —the fastest rate since 2016—followed by a slowing of growth to 3.5% in 2023, the World Bank says. Yet this growth is uneven across the region, as countries, still struggling to overcome the lasting effects of […]
Afreximbank has approved $200 million toward financing of a contested oil pipeline to export Uganda’s crude, while a report released by two environmental NGOs has warned of potentially “unacceptable” damage caused by a controversial project involving French oil giant TotalEnergies and China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). The Nigeria-based bank was also willing to finance […]