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Corporate watch: Azalai Hotels, a Malian multinational
A multinational from Mali sounds like a contradiction in terms. But the Azalai Hotels chain is just that.
Businessman Mossadeck Bally got into hotels 20 years ago. He now presides over a chain of six landmark properties in four countries, with a sheaf of expansion plans. He’s not yet Africa’s Conrad Hilton. But he has built a thriving group recently valued at over €60m, employing 800 people in some of the world’s poorest states. Continue reading »
Randgold chief executive Mark Bristow has criticised a “disturbing” tendency among African governments to increase taxes and regulations on mining investors, as the company disputes its tax bill with the Malian government.
The chief executive of the FTSE 100 gold mining company, which has operations in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast made his statement at the Mining Indaba conference currently taking place in Cape Town. He claimed that revisions to mining laws risked deterring investment on the continent. Continue reading »
Mali: spillover or lack of it
Mali’s economic isolation is helping west African rated sovereigns avoid revisions to their creditworthiness, said Standard & Poor’s in a note released on Thursday night covering Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia
FDI and portfolio flows between Mali and its neighbours are small and regional capital markets are underdeveloped. Trade and investment linkages are weak due to tariffs, poor infrastructure, low incomes and inefficient customs procedures. Continue reading »
Guest post: French intervention in Mali to hit regional economy
By Philippe de Pontet and Riccardo Fabiani of Eurasia Group
The investor and geopolitical impacts of the French-led intervention against Islamist militants in Mali will reverberate far beyond the country’s porous borders. Indeed they already have, as the grisly kidnapping of dozens of expatriates in BP’s southern Algerian gas field has shown.
Mali will continue to be the epicenter of combat, casualties, and French preoccupation, but the real risks to multinationals and foreign citizens will play out elsewhere in a vast region that spans North Africa, West Africa and the largely ungoverned Sahel which lies at crossroads of the two. Continue reading »
Mali conflict: watch the spillover
The conflict in Mali has intensified following the onset of a major French military intervention and promises by Islamists to retaliate against western targets across the region. What might be the economic spillover effects of the conflict?
Mali may not play an integral role in the world economy, but many of its neighboring countries do as suppliers of key petrochemicals and minerals – so the potential for disruption from the conflict is more significant than it might at first seem. Continue reading »
Mali: gold miners hurt by travel ban
Mali, Africa’s third biggest gold producer behind South Africa and Ghana, has rapidly ascended the list of Sahelian countries thought to be succumbing to al-Qaida linked militants. The north of the country remains under rebel Tuareg control after the bungled coup in March.
But according to the head of one gold miner, many countries are now issuing clumsy nationwide travel bans that are hurting the mining industry in the peaceful south. Continue reading »
Broadband in W Africa: the challenges
West Africa’s mobile phone and data markets are often seen as bright spots in otherwise turbulent economies. But a top regulator in the region says there are still many issues to address before declaring victory in modernising the sector.
Governments, operators and investors need to move beyond the “euphoria” of high penetration rates and realise that ICT (information and communications technology) is about more than having a mobile phone, says Nnamdi Nwokike, executive secretary of the West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (Watra). Continue reading »
Randgold: no crisis here
Crisis? What crisis? African gold miner Randgold Resources shrugged off concerns over the political situation following the coup in Mali in March as it delivered first-quarter profits which more than doubled that achieved in the same period last year.
However profits slipped when compared with the previous quarter as production fell to 165,000 ounces in the three months to March – lower than the quarter to December but in line with previous guidance which is expected to see annual production increase from to between 825,000 and 865,000 ounces this year. Randgold produced 696,000 ounces of gold in 2011 and trebled profits. Continue reading »
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