In October 2023, MTN received a binding offer for the sale of both MTN Guinea-Bissau and MTN Guinea-Conakry for a consideration of $1 for each of the companies. MTN and Telecel signed a sale and purchase agreement on 15 December 2023, with the deal subject to regulatory approval.

MTN Guinea-Bissau faced financial struggles after breaching a R171 million ($9.3 million) loan with an undisclosed lender. It became insolvent in December 2023 after its liabilities of R802 million ($43.6 million) surpassed its assets of R619 million ($33.7 million).

“MTN has taken steps to ensure a seamless transfer of ownership, which the Group believes is in the best interests of MTN Guinea-Bissau, its stakeholders and the sector in Guinea-Bissau at large,” MTN told shareholders on Wednesday

MTN will focus on larger West African markets including Ghana, Cameroon, and Cote d’Ivoire which accounted for 19% of the pan-African telco’s revenue per 2023 annual results.

With Holcim’s approval, the deal will also need the approval of the minority shareholders and the regulators including the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA).

Amsons offered shareholders $0.52 (KES65) per share, a 44.4% premium on Bamburi’s closing price on July 10, when the deal was made public. Bamburi’s share price has since rallied to KES61 ($0.47). Bamburi is the largest cement maker in Kenya, with about 30% market share.

“KCB Investment Bank Ltd, being the transaction advisor and sponsoring stockbroker of Amsons has confirmed that Amsons has sufficient financial resources at its disposal to satisfy the consideration payable for all shares in Bamburi pursuant to a full acceptance of the offer,” Bamburi said.

The transaction could see Bamburi delist from the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). However, Amsons must receive the backing of at least 75% of the offered shares before seeking CMA approval to delist from the Nairobi bourse.

Should Amsons acquire 90% of the offer share, the company will “offer the remaining shareholders a consideration equal to the prevailing market price of the voting shares or the price offered to the other shareholders”, per Kenya’s takeover regulations.

The acquisition will mark the Tanzanian firm’s formal entry into the Kenyan market, with plans to expand into other sectors, the company said on July 10.

The family-owned conglomerate, founded in 2006, has interests in oil and gas, real estate, wheat flour, and cement in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Its annual turnover is over $1 billion.

On Tuesday, the 35-year-old lender valued at ₦696.69 billion shared its expansion plans in a presentation to shareholders and other stakeholders at the Nigeria Exchange Limited (NGX).

“When you are the largest bank in Nigeria and one of the largest banks in Africa, where do you go from here?’ Our vision is now global, very, very global,” Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Access Holdings Plc Chairman said in his presentation on Tuesday.

With over 60 million customers and a presence in three continents, Access will expand into new markets including the United States, and set up a trade booking office in Malta.

“We are very selective in the markets we invest in. We are chasing the money. It isn’t a return on ego. We are focused on where the money is,” Roosevelt Ogbonna, Access Bank MD/CEO said.

What will Access use the money for?

Access will invest ₦223.00 billion (65% of the proceeds from the rights issue) to grow its loan book to offer more lending services across corporate and commercial business, retail business, and SME segments.

It will also spend ₦68.62 billion (20%) to upgrade and develop its infrastructure. 15% of the proceeds (₦51.46 billion) will be invested in distribution and product channels, including new branches in Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Abuja over the next 24 months.

With the fresh capital, Access hopes to “become the world’s first truly African global brand in the financial sector.” Since its acquisition by Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede and his late partner Herbert Wigwe in 2002, Access has grown aggressively through a strategy focused on local and foreign acquisitions to build a presence in 18 countries. In 2012, it merged with Intercontinental Bank, and seven years later completed a merger with Diamond Bank. In 2023, it acquired majority shares in Standard Chartered Bank’s subsidiaries in Angola, Cameroon, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone. In June 2024, Access acquired African Banking Corporation of Tanzania (ABCT) Limited.

“There is no Nigerian bank that was our size in 2002 that is still alive today. Some of the banks that analysts now compare us with, you couldn’t mention Access beside those banks in 2002. It’d have been an insult to those institutions,” Ogbonna said.

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Diageo will retain ownership of the Guinness brand, it will be licenced to Guinness Nigeria, now majorly owned by Tolaram for the long term.

Having acquired majority shares, Tolaram will launch a mandatory takeover offer per rules from the Nigerian Exchange. Guinness Nigeria will however remain a publicly listed company.

“Under the terms of the agreement signed today, 11 June 2024…Tolaram will enter into a long-term licence and royalty agreements for the continued production of the Guinness brand and its locally manufactured Diageo ready-to-drink and mainstream spirits brand,” a statement from Guinness Nigeria said.

The transaction is expected to be concluded in 2025 pending the necessary regulatory approvals.

“Our partnership with Diageo to jointly grow Guinness Nigeria underscores our commitment to build on our strong presence and heritage in Nigeria, cultivated over decades of dedication and unwavering confidence in the future of Africa,” said Sajen Aswani Tolaram’s chief executive.

“We take a long-term view on all our investments and this partnership reflects our optimism on the exciting opportunities that lie ahead across the continent.”

“I’m excited to announce our new partnership with Tolaram. Guinness has been Nigeria’s favourite beer for nearly 75 years. Tolaram share this passion for Guinness and for Nigeria, making them the perfect partners as we continue to grow our business and seek to delight even more consumers in the country,” commented Debra Crew, Diageo CEO.

*This is a developing story

At a company-wide meeting last Friday, some 150 workers were told about the layoffs. The company has a relatively small number for a factory thanks to a high level of automation, one person familiar with their operations said. It also outsources sales and distribution to Multipro. Maersk, the Dannish shipping and logistics company, handled its imports and exports.

The retained employees will eventually be laid off when the exit is completed.

A communications manager for Kimberly-Clark did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

While it did not initially share a timeline when it announced its exit plan, the company’s actions mean it will write off its $100 million investment in a manufacturing facility that was launched in Lagos in 2022. It will also cease manufacturing or marketing its Huggies and Kotex products in the country. 

In a statement last Friday, the company said it is exiting Nigeria due to a “recently refocused company strategic priorities globally as well as economic developments in the country.” 

Kimberly-Clark’s departure from Nigeria after almost 15 years is a telltale sign of the struggles of manufacturing in Nigeria with companies having to deal with depressed consumer spending power, high cost of electricity, and FX scarcity. Multinationals like Unilever, GSK, and PZ Cussons have either scaled back or exited market segments entirely.

Founded in 2019, Cape Town-based Adumo provides card-acquiring POS devices, integrated payments and reconciliations services to merchants and consumers. The company claims to process over R24 billion ($1.3 billion) annually and has 23,000 merchants and 240,000 consumers using its services respectively.

Lesaka currently owns EasyPay, South Africa’s largest payment switch not owned by a bank and Kazang, a widely popular card-acquiring POS device company. A combination of the services will enable the company to grab a significant market share in the southern African region, where competing startups like YOCO are still only based in South Africa.

In February, Lesaka acquired Touchsides, a data analytics and merchant services company with over 10,000 point-of-sale terminals across South Africa, for an undisclosed amount. Touchsides was previously owned by international beverage giant Heineken.

According to Lesaka, the acquisition will give the company a footprint of 1.7 million active consumers and 119, 000 merchants across South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Kenya. “The acquisition reinforces Lesaka’s position as a natural consolidator of Southern African Fintech and will enhance our strengths in both the consumer and merchant markets,” the company said in a statement.

Headline inflation reached a 27-year high of 29.90% in January 2024. Only Zimbabwe (34.8%), Congo (42.5%), Sierra Leone (52.16%), and war-torn Sudan (63.3%) have higher inflation rates.[ad]

In a meeting in early February, Cardoso said he expects inflation to moderate to 21.4% in 2024 using CBN’s inflation-targeting policy; next week’s MPC meeting will be a stern test of the bank’s ability to match talk with action. 

Bloomberg analysts expect an interest rate increase of 500 basis points. However, Basil Abia, a co-founder at Veriv Africa and policy analyst, believes the CBN will take a more moderate path and increase rates by 100 basis points instead, from 18.75% to 19.75%. 

“It is difficult to see how raising rates can make an impact,” Abia argued in an email response. 

“Nigeria’s inflation is a cost-push inflation buoyed by a steep increase in energy costs across the board, frequent energy scarcity, a nationwide food supply shortage problem, an illiquid power generation value chain, foreign exchange scarcity,” he added. 

Mayowa Badejo, a partner at 213 Capital, an investment and risk advisory firm, believes inflation will only moderate after the naira begins to strengthen.

It’s a nod to Cardoso and the CBN’s other troubles, like a volatile Naira that has resisted every policy thrown at it. 

The central bank hiked open market rates to 19% from under 12% to mop up excess liquidity and has tweaked the rules for oil companies to repatriate FX from Nigeria, but the Naira’s slide has only worsened this week.

Cardoso, who previously dismissed the impact of monetary policy meetings, is under pressure to deliver stability. This week, an aide of President Tinubu urged Cardoso to consider the “political implications” of the CBN’s policies. 

“Inflation outturns over the past two years have risen even beyond this average historical rate and persisted for much longer than initially expected,” read a statement from the NBE. [ad]

According to data from the NBE, Ethiopia recorded consecutive months of inflation below 30%. In December 2023, the annual inflation rate increased to 28.7% from 28.3% in November 2023. Food prices, which comprise over half (53.5%) of the consumer price index (CPI) grew to 30.6% compared to the same period in 2022, and slightly higher than the 30% recorded in November 2023. The jump was linked to the nation’s internal conflict, the Tigray war.  

An overlap in malnutrition, disease, and food insecurity has worsened the situation. About 4 million people have also been affected by the ongoing drought. “Some supply-side and cost-push factors found to be statistically significant in contributing to inflation have included the internal conflict that disrupted local food transport/distribution networks and the large jump in key global commodity prices,” said the NBE. 

Other items besides food increased to 26.1% in December 2023 from 26.0% in the prior month, influenced by a weaker currency, the Ethiopian birr. Nonetheless, the NBE wants to reduce inflation to under 20% by June 2024 and under 10% by June 2025. They plan to do this by managing how much money is lent and cutting back on giving money directly to the government. [ad]

Performance of the Ethiopian birr

In December 2023, the birr lost value by 4.8%, ending the year at 56.1 birr for $1 from 53.6 birr recorded in December 2022, per a statement shared by Safaricom Ethiopia. The government made some changes in September 2022 to bring more foreign currency into the country. For instance, the NBE halted foreign currency use for purchasing in the country. Ethiopians can only keep foreign currencies for 30 days, instead of 90 when they return to the country from foreign trips. At the same time, the NBE made it easier for people to bring foreign currency into the country.

Ethiopians can bring up to $4,000 without declaring the cash at customs. However, the amount of money non-citizens can bring in without alerting customs officials has more than tripled from $3,000 to $10,000.

The major driver of Nigeria’s inflation is food, and prices of staples like bread and yam rose as many shoppers in the country struggled to afford their proteins during the festive period. December’s food inflation figure was 33.93%. [ad]

“The government has to start doing something with respect to the price of fuel and energy, including electricity, and improving the exchange rate depreciation situation,” said Sheriffdeen Tella, a professor of Economics at Olabisi Onabanjo University. “Once those things are done, we will start getting reduced inflation.”

Last week, the World Bank projected Nigeria’s inflation to ease in 2024, hinged on last year’s reforms and the expectation of the easing of the effects of petroleum subsidy removal. However, other analysts are not optimistic that inflation will slow any time soon.

The Central Bank Governor, Yemi Cardoso, dismissed the effect of rate hike meetings on curbing inflation at his last public outing.

For the second consecutive week, the Nigerian stock market began on a positive note, as investors continued to take advantage of the market’s strong performance to trade more stocks. The All Share Index, a metric that tracks the movement of share prices on an exchange, hit a 7-month high of 83,191.84 at the end of Tuesday’s trading. 

The NGX grew by nearly 4% today, driving the banking stocks of some tier-1 banks like First Bank Holdings into a trillion naira market capitalisation. Other stocks in the manufacturing, agriculture and insurance sectors also drove today’s strong results. [ad]

“The market is expected to remain bullish in the short run,” said Samuel Oyekanmi, a Lagos-based financial analyst. With the market’s positive results, it resumed where it dropped off in 2023. 

Yet, other analysts warned that the bullish trend of the stock exchange will not last forever, predicting a possible dip later this month.  “Investors may begin to take profit towards the later part of the month,” Oyekanmi warned. Another analyst, Mayowa Badejo told TechCabal that the current strong performance could be a move to attract more people into the market and take profits later on. “It’s also possible that some traders are intentionally driving the prices up to attract newbies in the hope of dumping after the bandwagon effect,” he added.