Sputnik Africa

🇿🇲 Zambia joined the Central Corridor to boost its economy, the Eastern Africa trade route managing agency says

According to the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency, Zambia’s joining expands the corridor's reach beyond the East African Community as for now Zambia is the only country which is not the community’s member.

The Central Corridor is a trade and transportation route in East and Central Africa, connecting landlocked countries to the Indian Ocean via Tanzania.

"The inclusion of Zambia is expected to further strengthen the Central Corridor’s position as a preferred trade route for regional and international commerce," the agency's statement read.

Zambia already has existing transport connections to Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, making this a strategic move to strengthen trade and development within the region, the agency noted.

📈 "It will also contribute to the overall economic growth and prosperity in the region," the document added.

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🇷🇺 IAEA shows interest in BRICS’s nuclear platform, Rosatom CEO Likhachev says

"We see an interest of the IAEA in our association, our platform. We need specific sites where we can test the IAEA’s standards, certain regulatory standards in practice, and show how it works," Likhachev said in an interview to a Russian TV channel.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that BRICS has never been and is not planning to become a military union, despite any allegations to the contrary. BRICS is a multidisciplinary strategic partnership that rests on three pillars: politics and security, economics and finance, and culture and humanitarian ties, the ministry added.

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🇰🇪🇦🇪 Nairobi intends to get $1.5 billion loan from the United Arab Emirates, Kenyan Finance Minister says

The terms of receiving the loan will include an 8.25% interest rate and a seven-year tenor, reported the media, citing Finance Minister John Mbadi. He added that new option be cheaper than get the Eurobond loan at 10.7%.

Mbadi underscored that his country hold talks with the IMF amid concerns of getting the commercial loan from the UAE.

"There are issues to be discussed, including with the IMF, which had expressed some reservations, because we are talking about this being an external loan and is dollar-denominated, it may expose us to additional risk," the Kenyan minister was quoted as saying at a presser.

Speaking at the Summit of the Future at the United Nations General Assembly in September, Kenya's President William Ruto criticized the current structure of multilateral institutions, arguing that they are ineffective in addressing the challenges facing developing countries.

The president believes that institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are not equipped to deal with complex issues and instead have a negative impact on developing countries.

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🇪🇹💰'Significant milestone': Ethiopian PM lauds start of Ethio Telecom shares sales to the public

State-owned Ethiopian company Ethio Telecom plans to offer 10% of its share to the public, the country's prime minister Abiy Ahmed Ali wrote on X, calling it "a significant milestone."

"We launch the sale of Ethio Telecom shares, an essential step in our ongoing journey from political revolution to evolution over the past six years," Abiy said.

He added that this decision contributes to the development of Ethiopian stock market and expanding access to ownership in one of the nation’s leading state-owned enterprises.

Ethiopian News Agency reported that the maximum price for shares is 999,900 Birr ($8.29 for 3,333 shares), at the same time, the minimum figure equals 9,900 Birr ($0.09 for 33 shares).

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🇳🇬🌾 Flour Mills of Nigeria is embarking on a $1 bln expansion plan over the next four years, media says

The country's largest miller will be restructured after Excelsior Shipping Company, which last month offered to buy out its minorities, takes it private, forming 22 units consolidated into five individual companies. This move aims to attract technical and financial partners to support Flour Mills's growth, Bloomberg reported.

"We want to be able to attract partners — technical and financial partners — to help us grow our sugar operations and our food business. We have a lot of ambitious plans for investment and expansion," the company’s chairman John Coumantaros told the media.

The new funding is about "doubling down on investment in Nigeria," he emphasized.

The investment will mostly come from internal sources; however, in some specific areas the company will seek external expertise.

➡️ Flour Mills plans to expand across West Africa and leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which to boost intra-African trade and socio-economic growth development in the region, to create a pan-African food business, the news agency added.

"Our dream is to have a pan-African food business that is headquartered in Nigeria. We’ll take advantage of the AfCFTA so that we can expand our footprint into those regions," the company’s head noted.

The company reportedly also envisions a future relisting on the Nigerian Stock Exchange after its repositioning.

▫️This investment plan comes amidst a wave of reforms by President Bola Tinubu aimed at attracting investment and stabilizing the economy, while some major firms like Diageo and Unilever are leaving or reducing their activity in the country.

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🇺🇸🇧🇷 Inequality in US presidential elections is influenced by slavery, Brazilian experts say

Carlos Eduardo Martins, a researcher at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, told Sputnik that in the US citizens don't elect their leader by voting at the polls that, in his opinion, promotes the inequality. He pointed out that developed during the slavery period, the electoral college was created so that the southern states with considerable enslaved population would not be underrepresented in the federal executive branch.

Another expert, Roberto Goulart Menezes, who is a professor of international relations at the University of Brasília, said that the American elections aim at keeping the oligarchy in power. He highlighted that in the US the candidates must choose which type of financing they will use for their campaign: public or private.

"And this private financing, of course, is in the interests of large economic groups," Menezes said.

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