The Rio Times Africa Intelligence
Thursday, August 13, 2026
By Matthias Camenzind, Publisher
Ghana used to import twice what it sold. Now it sells US$32 billion and buys US$20.5 billion.
The reversal took twenty years and it is worth stating precisely. In 2004, Ghana exported US$1.93 billion and imported US$4.09 billion — imports were 67.9% of all its trade. In 2025, exports reached US$32.0 billion against imports of US$20.5 billion, and exports now make up 61.3% of total trade. The ratio has not narrowed; it has inverted.
Nigeria's EFCC recovers US$169 million in levies from oil firms
Guinea moves toward a US$425 million IMF deal
Jumia raises US$50 million led by the IFC as revenue climbs 14%
Two governments go hunting for diaspora money in the same week
Tanzania rewrites its investment law to court technology money
Good morning. Two governments went after the same pool of money this week, and it is not the one you would expect. Nigeria launched a diaspora mortgage loan programme — in London. And the Governor of the Bank of Ghana told his banks to start building diaspora investment products.
Why it matters: Remittances have always been the continent's most reliable inflow — larger than aid, steadier than portfolio money, and countercyclical when everything else runs. What is changing is the ambition: not to receive transfers, but to convert them into mortgages, bonds and deposits that stay. That is a different financial product and a much harder trust problem, because it asks people who left to lend to the institutions they left. Ghana and Nigeria reaching for it in the same week says the appetite for cheaper domestic funding has become urgent.
On the enforcement side, a rare recovery with numbers attached: Nigeria's EFCC recovered N115 billion (about US$85 million) plus a further US$84 million in statutory levies owed to the Niger Delta Development Commission. It investigated 43 oil companies, found 24 with outstanding liabilities and cleared 19.
African currencies
Per US dollar, 13 August.
CEDI · GH
11.77
trade surplus
NAIRA · NG
1,363
EFCC recovery
RAND · ZA
16.18
SARS assessments
SHILLING · TZ
2,640
new investment law
FRANC · GN
8,776
IMF talks
SHILLING · KE
129.4
—
GOLD
US$4,414
▲ Fed bets cool
Ghana, Mali, SA
OIL
USO $127+
• Hormuz shut
Nigeria, Angola
The big moves
Jumia raises US$50 million led by the IFC as revenue climbs 14% › Africa's best-known e-commerce name takes development-finance money rather than venture money — and posts growth to go with it.
Why it matters: Who leads a round tells you what a company is being valued as. An IFC-led raise prices Jumia as infrastructure — logistics and payments rails for a continent — rather than as a growth-stage retailer. That is a lower ceiling and a much firmer floor, and after years of the opposite framing it may be the more honest one.
Guinea moves toward a new US$425 million IMF facility › Landing while Conakry runs the clock on its raw-gold export ban, which expires on 6 October. A government tightening resource rules and seeking Fund money at the same time is making a bet on sequencing.
Tanzania rewrites its investment law to court technology money › Read alongside a new social-media tax rule raising privacy and cybersecurity concerns — the same government courting digital capital and taxing digital speech in the same week.
Institutions, tax & transparency
Senegal will publish who has declared their assets — and who has not › Ofnac starts releasing the lists. Publishing the names of the compliant is the cheapest anti-corruption tool there is, because it makes the absences visible.
Ghana and Korea unveil a tax-modernisation master plan · South Africa's SARS raises US$2.5M in assessments against the Maumela matriarch · India and SACU move to deepen trade
Business & resources
A South African court clears ARC as the Tanzanian graphite dispute continues
Vodacom sets its board succession as Saki Macozoma retires · PayJustNow's owner faces bad-debt risk
Policy & society
Algeria asks Meta to tie WhatsApp accounts to Algerian numbers · Niger enforces its plastic-bag ban
France freezes a Franco-Cameroonian activist's assets in a legal first
The Pentagon acknowledges 153 civilian deaths in Yemen, including Ethiopian migrants
The wider world, from our desks
This morning's Global Economy Briefing · Ryanair signs a five-year Google Cloud AI deal
Matthias Camenzind
Publisher, The Rio Times
