The state oil company Sonatrach and Royal Dutch Shell announced that they had signed a preliminary agreement on the trading of crude oil, natural gas, and oil products. This is a big win for Sonatrach which has had to shoulder the burden of reversing the country’s declining economic fortunes over the last few years in its role as the biggest oil company in an energy-dependent economy. Since the heralding of the country’s new oil law in 2019, Sonatrach has signed numerous such deals, most of these have been in upstream cooperation. This makes this new agreement a unique achievement given that Shell is particularly well established as a downstream provider owing to its robust transport fleet and its extensive experience as a transporter of oil products. Notably, Shell has also stated that it will work together with Sonatrach to minimise emissions for the extent of the deal.

The South African-based telecoms giant announced this month that its initial 2020 agreement to collaborate with Alibaba on the creation of a local African “super app” has begun to bear fruit. Planned features include the ability to pay bills and utilities, transfer money and contact online merchants and service providers. This move is a major step not only for South African telecoms, but for the global industry. So-called “super apps” are widely considered the next big step in the mobile money space. The basic concept is to unite all disparate financial services a customer might seek and distil them onto a single touchpoint, from which users can do everything from access their bank account, order food, contact emergency services, apply for loans, book transport etc.

Twitter announced this month that it had chosen Ghana as the landfall for its Africa presence starting with 11 local staff members working from home. The announcement took analysts by surprise as the general consensus was that the social media giant was far more likely to pick a country with a more developed tech and start-up space like Kenya, Nigeria, or South Africa. In parallel news, Amazon announced this month that it is looking to establish a larger physical location in South Africa to help expand its cloud computing and customer service offerings to its growing African customer base. The R4.5 billion River Club Development has been listed as the location. The company has been operating in South Africa since 2004 but has only recently opened its first physical office through Amazon Web Services back in 2015.

Global investment giant Meridian has made waves this month with its announced decision to invest in the construction of data centres in Africa. The firm will start by funding the US-based Roxio Group with US$48 million to help expand its data centres footprint across the continent. Roxio has garnered a reputation in recent years with a committed expansion into previously untapped central and east African markets. In March this year, the company broke ground with the announcement that it would be beginning construction of a data centre at one of Ethiopia’s many new ICT parks. The company has indicated additional data centre developments in forthcoming years in Uganda’s capital Kampala, and the same for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital Kinshasa.

Global coffee producers and enthusiasts breathed a sigh of relief in April with the discovery of wild Stenophylla plants in rural Sierra Leone which holds much promise for the future of the industry. With global temperatures set to rise due to climate change, the world’s major coffee producers, who are all located in the tropics and subtropics, will encounter more extreme weather events, which has up until recently caused many to speculate that coffee would eventually go extinct as a viable cash crop. Stenophylla is far more drought resistant however and has virtually the same taste as Arabica coffee, making it the perfect substitute for the present crops expected to fail in the coming decades.