The most important developments in sub-Saharan Africa. Six days a week.
Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote launched a $2.5 billion fuel storage and regional pipeline project at Walvis Bay, Namibia, on 4 November. The terminal is planned to hold 600 million litres of diesel and petrol, eight times the national oil storage facility of the state-owned National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia, and a 1,700-kilometre pipeline would branch towards Rundu and to Francistown in Botswana. Earlier plans described a much smaller terminal, and the petroleum facility still needs its own environmental approval. The hub would give Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe a western supply route through an Atlantic port, but each cross-border link needs agreements with the governments concerned. Dangote expects the terminal to be completed within 18 to 20 months.
Ethiopia has ordered six staff of Sudan's consulate in the border town of Assosa to leave within 48 hours, Ethiopian officials told Reuters and the Associated Press on 4 November, giving no reason. The move follows complaints Sudan filed on 1 November with the United Nations Security Council and the African Union, accusing Ethiopia of letting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launch drones from its territory; Ethiopia denies this and accuses Khartoum of backing Tigrayan rebels. Having expelled Eritrean diplomats and an Egyptian diplomat in October, Addis Ababa is now in open dispute with all three neighbours it accuses of aiding the Tigray offensive, deepening fears that the two countries' wars spill across their shared border.
Logistics group Grindrod has become the first private company to run its own train on South Africa's national freight rail network, completing a test round trip from Komatipoort on the North-East Corridor on 1–2 November. The train, made up of Grindrod's own locomotives and wagons, returned with 2,991 tonnes, Transnet Rail Infrastructure Manager (TRIM) said. TRIM has signed access agreements with 12 private train operators, and Grindrod plans to start hauling coal from Mpumalanga to its Matola terminal in Mozambique in 2027, about 288,000 tonnes in the first year. The run turns the opening of Transnet's network to competitors into working traffic; how far it grows depends on more train slots and corridor capacity.
Benin's Council of Ministers on 4 November created an Industrial Development Fund with capital of 100 billion CFA francs (about $170 million). The fund will take equity and quasi-equity stakes in industrial firms, guarantee part of long-term loans made by banks and leasing companies, and offer ready-to-use factory buildings in the country's development hubs. It was approved alongside the government's 2026–2033 action programme, which expects the private sector to provide 55% of its financing and cites textile plants using local cotton and ceramic-tile makers as models. Sharing risk with banks targets the long payback periods that keep commercial credit away from manufacturing. The next step is appointing the fund's managers and opening its three windows.
Gabon signed agreements in London on 3 November to sell about six million tonnes of forest carbon credits to SEFE, an energy company owned by the German state. The government says it is the first African country to sell credits measured across its whole territory from forest conservation that are eligible for the offsetting scheme of international aviation; first deliveries are due by the first quarter of 2027. Neither side disclosed the price. The sale turns Gabon's low deforestation rate into a tradable export, but its value depends on that price and on a national framework, still pending, that will decide how the money is shared, including with forest communities. Until then the proceeds stay in a reserve account.
