The most important developments in sub-Saharan Africa. Six days a week.
Australia's Bannerman Energy and CNNC Overseas, a unit of China National Nuclear Corporation, took a final investment decision on 23 October to build the Etango uranium mine in Namibia. The open-pit mine will cost about $353 million before production and should produce an average of 3.5 million pounds of uranium oxide a year from 2028. The joint venture, 55% owned by Bannerman, will build without project debt after the Chinese partner committed $320.4 million; in return it will buy 60% of the output. Etango gives Namibia, Africa's largest uranium producer, a new source of export earnings as its diamond revenue collapses, and ties most of the mine's output to Chinese buyers.
Burkina Faso's Council of Ministers created a presidential electrification initiative, Faso Wa-Fulu, on 22 October, with more than 2,800 billion CFA francs (about $4.8 billion) earmarked over ten years. It targets universal electricity access by 2030: 6,700 newly electrified localities, 3.5 million more households and businesses connected, and about 30,000 km of medium-voltage and 29,000 km of low-voltage lines. Only about 34% of the population had electricity in 2024, according to the World Bank, which estimates that the current pace would delay universal access until 2072. Meeting the target means roughly trebling the access rate in four years, and the government has not yet said how the programme will be financed.
Zambia's Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane asked parliament on 22 October to approve a second supplementary budget for 2026 worth about $990 million, three-quarters of it to pay farmers who sold maize to the state Food Reserve Agency (FRA). The agency bought 2.7 million tonnes this year against a target of 500,000 tonnes, as a bumper harvest met a state price well above private buyers' offers. The government will raise about $890 million of the extra spending by borrowing on the domestic market, while building grain reserves before an expected El Niño drought in 2027. The stockpile protects food supply, but financing it with local debt increases the state's draw on domestic savings and its interest bill.
Foreign-controlled banks made up 57.4% of the 54 banks in the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) at the end of 2025, down from 67.9% a year earlier, according to the annual report of the Banking Commission of Central Africa (COBAC), released on 22 October. Their number fell from 38 to 31, while banks owned by private national investors rose from six to ten. The shift follows Société Générale's exit from Cameroon, Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea, where its units passed to the state or to African groups. Local owners now control a larger share of a sector whose lending to governments rose 19.9% in 2025, tying banks more closely to public finances.
