Search Results for: Nigeria

IT is a curious irony that for an industry as technical as cogeneration that maybe the biggest handicap to its sustained growth in Europe is actually emotional. Both commercial markets and governments are swayed by sentiment as well as hard cash – and currently both influences are failing to pull in co-gen’s favour.…

Botswana’s first private university, the Malaysian-owned Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (Limkokwing Botswana), has continued to flex its muscles in this diamond-rich Southern Africa nation, taking advantage of a fast growing tertiary education sector. Botswana’s college and university student (aged 18-24) enrollment has grown from 11.4% in 2007/08 to 16.4% in 2012, or 46,613 students.…

SUB-SAHARAN African makers of cosmetics and personal care products are profiting from a growing and increasingly stable regional market, where economic growth is increasing demand for personal luxuries.

A report, ‘Business in Africa – Corporate Insights’ by Dianna Games, Standard Bank South Africa estimates that more than half of Africa’s population would be living in urban areas by 2030 and 60% by 2050, when the population would be about 2.4 billion, compared to 1 billion now.…

A SALUTARY lesson learnt by the western world since the financial meltdown in 2008, is that there is no easy formula for ensuring economic growth. Despite the resilience of the United States and European institutions, markets and skills, restarting the economic engine has proved sluggish.…

INDIAN consumer product company Godrej has been pushing into Africa’s hair care market with four acquisitions in the last five years, putting it in a strategic position to compete with major western companies.

Selling hair colourants, hair extensions and soaps in Africa through brands such as Inecto, Renew, Tura and Darling, Godrej is banking on Africa’s fast growing demand for cosmetics and other personal care products and is moving towards becoming an established multinational.…

*Gazprom International is one of the world’s largest energy companies, handling oil and gas geological exploration, production, transportation and storage; processing and selling oil, gas and oil and gas-based liquid fuels; while providing heat and electric power services.
*The state-owned company holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves: 18% and 72% of global and Russian reserves respectively.…

ISLAMIC banks are big business in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but not thus far in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), however, recently took a USD5 million, 15% equity stake in Kenya’s Gulf African Bank (GAB) to support corporate finance and lending to small and medium businesses – its first in the sub-Saharan Islamic bank sector.…

The vice-chancellor of Cameroon’s English-speaking University of Buea (UB) has declared she is determined to soothe tensions on her campus which have led to a series of violent strikes by students. Buea is one of two public English-speaking universities in majority-Francophone Cameroon.…

BIOMETRICS technologies producing voice and phone ‘fingerprints’ to prevent, detect and prosecute fraud and other crimes are evolving rapidly in an arms race between fraudsters, law enforcement, private companies and private sector anti-fraud companies.

For forensics, many jurisdictions admit voice biometrics in evidence.…

Although proper accounting is important for developing and emerging economies – for instance, informational transparency decreases transactional costs – obstacles remain, said Evgeny Buben, Gazprom Nigeria’s CFO: “There’s a lack of political will to start the process of harmonisation and control implementation; a lack of  professionals capable of performing proper implementation; resistance from local accounting bodies and other local influential groups; resistance of local accountants and auditors to changes.”…