Oil to okadas: Africa’s top business news

STORY: Here are five business stories making headlines in Sub Saharan Africa this week.

TotalEnergies has launched the sale of its 10% stake in Nigerian joint venture SPDC.

The sale includes interest in 13 onshore fields and three in shallow water producing 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day.

Big oil has been progressively exiting Nigeria’s onshore production due to years of sabotage and theft in the Delta region, which has suffered decades of oil spills and pollution.

Ghana has started a bulk purchase programme to buy gold locally, the Central Bank said on Tuesday (May 17), to raise the gold component in its reserves

That’s a bid to strengthen the cedi currency, which has been depreciating, without increasing inflation, which hit an 18-year-record in April.

South African grocery and clothing retailer Pick n Pay aims to cut costs by three billion rand – that’s $187m – in the next three years and grow market share by 3%.

The aim is to improve shareholder returns which have been dropping over the past year in a highly competitive market.

The UK’s development finance institution, British International Investment, and U.S. bank Citigroup have signed a $100m risk-sharing facility for Africa – to boost lending to small businesses by up to four times that amount.

The two parties will share risk 50/50 as they aim to provide capital to markets seen as risky because of an uncertain business environment and currency fluctuations.

And finally Nigeria’s megacity Lagos said on Wednesday (May 18) that it is banning motorcycle taxis, which it called unsafe.

The okadas are a popular mode of transport in a city where traffic jams are a daily part of life.

It was not immediately clear if the ban would include ride-hailing start-ups like Gokada and Max.ng that have sought to capitalize on the city’s teeming population of 20 million.