Category: Regions

New rail track will expand trade between Chad and its southern neighbours, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea Chad is taking steps to counter its landlocked isolation by building transport links to the Atlantic coast of West Africa in order to facilitate two-way trade. In a major development in the West African region, Cameroon and Chad have

Africa’s leading online retailer expands its operations in to Cameroon expecting robust online sales Jumia is rapidly becoming a household name across the continent of Africa. Following its recent launches in Uganda and Ghana, the online retailer has now gone live in Cameroon. With the launch of the Jumia in Cameroon, the company is now

Seen by many as a sign of a new business trend, Gulf Arab companies are increasing their direct investments in Africa with an eye on the continent’s huge untapped resources and rapidly expanding rising middle-class with increasing disposable incomes.  The new interest in the African markets by GCC nations is seen as a shift away

Rwanda will set up a wholesale market in Kigali for the benefit of potato farmers in the country. To be built in the Gisozi area of the capital city, the market’s aim will be to provide farmers with a guaranteed market for the popular Irish potato crop, tackling price uncertainty and simultaneously promoting the export

Production has begun at Nigeria’s first sugarcane bio-factory in the city of Zaria at Kaduna state. The facility, which will have the capacity to produce one million sugarcane seedlings per annum, was declared open by Nigerian trade minister Olusegun Aganga at Zaria’s Ahmadu Bello University in May 2015. “A bio-factory is a facility where disease-free

The government of Rwanda and Howard G Buffett Foundation have signed a US$24mn partnership deal to fund the development of irrigation infrastructure in Kirehe district in the country’s Eastern Province. The project is set to start next week over 1,280 ha of land in the Nosha sector of Kirehe district. The area is drought-prone and

New Holland Agriculture has launched the new four-model TS6 Series tractor range in the Kenyan market. At the launch in Kisumu in western Kenya, Federico Bellotto, business director for Africa and Middle East at New Holland, said that the new line of TS6 Series tractors “are customised to operate in the tough conditions here in

China CAMC Engineering has announced plans to revive operations at Arda Mushumbi Pools Estate with a US$200mn investment The estate in Mashonaland Central region will get the money over the next five years, and the funding will be used to develop irrigation. The Chinese company had sealed a deal with Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Rural Development Authority

The government of South Africa has decided to spend US$33.8mn for the establishment of agri-parks in the KwaZulu-Natal region. Gugile Nkwinti, minister of rural development and land reform, announced that ten sites have been identified for the establishment of agri-parks and that they are in different stages of development. “Each district has been reviewed and

India-based Indo Farm Equipment Limited (Indo Farm) is planning to start manufacturing operations in various regions of Africa. Indo Farm manufactures tractors, harvesters, diesel generators, engines, small cranes, and other agricultural implements. Its products are exported to more than 40 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Since Africa is a high-growth market for agriculture,

Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) has inaugurated its online trading platform, simply called eTRADE Platform. The new online trading platform has the capacity to trade nearly 5,000 times more transactions than ECX’s current ‘pit trading’ platform. The eTRADE platform was developed entirely by the Exchange over the past two years and is expected to dramatically increase

The Chinese government is funding a laboratory at a Kenyan university that will train students and conduct agricultural research. The lab will come up in Egerton University which has its main campus in Njoro in south-western Kenya. A crop molecular laboratory is under construction in the campus, in collaboration with China’s Nanjing Agricultural University, for

FAO, China and Uganda have signed a two year agreement worth almost US$2.5mn to support small-scale farmers in Uganda The agreement marks the second phase of a partnership that was established in 2012 to make training and technical advice available to the Ugandan agriculture sector. It will help farmers in the African country boost their

A Chinese company has signed an agreement with a Kenyan regional government to set up a fish processing plant at the cost of US$9mn China’s Beijing Xidan Company Limited will build an ultra-modern fish processing plant in Naivasha in the Nakuru country, about 120 km northwest of Nairobi. Kinuthia Mbugua, governor of Nakuru county, said

As Internet access has broadened, technology firms have been able to reach out to an ever wider audience including farmers in Africa, finds out a report by McKinsey & Co. The trend is set to continue, with half of Africa’s one billion people predicted to have Internet access by 2025, according to McKinsey & Co.

Openshopen.ng has been named e-commerce platform of the year at a recent awards ceremony in Nigeria The website, which acts as the e-commerce platform for Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) Plc, garnered the most votes in its category at the Beacon of Information and Communication Technology (BOICT) awards in the Nigerian capital, Lagos. Former president of