Ghana seeks to borrow $1.7bn to help acquire energy assets. South Africa’s factory activity tumbles after civil unrest.

African Markets Daily

Ghana is seeking parliamentary approval to borrow as much as $1.7 billion in order to accelerate oil and gas exploration by acquiring and developing assets. The investment push comes after Exxon Mobil pulled out of an offshore prospect in May.

South African manufacturing activity shrank at its fastest rate in 14 months in July, weighed down by tighter coronavirus lockdown restrictions and civil unrest.

The Bank of Botswana’s (bob) latest business expectations survey reveals that companies are upbeat about economic activity over the next year compared with the previous survey’s results. Companies now expect that real GDP will increase by 2.9% in 2021 compared with their previous expectation of 2.2%. Despite the overall improvement in the outlook, it is still significantly less optimistic than the forecasts of the ministry of finance and economic development which expected growth of +8.8%, and IMF forecast +8.3%.

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