By Monte Reel The bartender measures a shot of Johnnie Walker Red Label in a steel jigger and dumps it over ice. A waitress sets the glass on a tray and steers it through the dining room, where Abouye Wang, the restaurant owner, commands a booth in the back corner, elbows on the table, surveying...
November 9, 2026
Category: Market Bazaar
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Profile: Djibouti
President Ismail Omar Guelleh By Nan Spowart WHILE the United States has condemned the human rights record of Djibouti’s president Ismail Omar Guelleh no foreign power is likely to object to him continuing in office for a fourth term after the presidential elections next month. Barren, small and impoverished the country may be but its...
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Economic Insight: Africa Quarterly briefing Q1 2016
By ACAEW Africa is the most commodity-dependent continent on earth, partly because manufacturing still accounts for a relatively small share of output. Most goods are exported in a raw state without being processed, refined or having had value added to them in other ways (unlike, forexample, several Middle East oil exporting economies, which have extensive...
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Foreign governments press Saudi Arabia on workers’ delayed wages
By Katie Paul, Marwa Rashad and Karen Lema RIYADH/MANILA (Reuters) – Foreign governments are pressing authorities and executives in Saudi Arabia to ensure that local construction firms make delayed salary payments to thousands of workers, a sign of pressure on the kingdom’s economy due to low oil prices. Since late last year, the Saudi government...
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Belgian Skies Wide Open for ET Cargo
The governments in Brussels and Addis Ababa have reached an aviation accord. Ethiopian Cargo could profit most from the deal. It enables the carrier to offer scheduled services from Brussels or Liege to third countries. However, the airline has not reacted to the deal so far, confirming their departure from Maastricht and returning to Brussels....
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Barclays plans sell-off of African operations
Jill Treanor Barclays chief executive Jes Staley is said to have concluded that it was time to consider a sale of it’s operations in Africa. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg /Getty Images Barclays is preparing to scale back its global ambitions by selling off its once-prized African operations. The bank, under the leadership of its new chief executive,...
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More phones, few banks and years of instability are transforming Somalia to a cashless society
Somali traders at markets like this one in Mogadishu are increasingly more likely to do business using cellphones instead of cash.(Reuters/Feisal Omarr By Tony Onyulo Mogadishu, Somalia, Ahmed Farah Hassan no longer carries the tattered Somali shilling notes that were the currency of his war-torn country’s economy for years. At a gas station in Mogadishu recently,...
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Big Banks and the White House Are Teaming Up to Fleece Poor People
By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa When Wall Street and its regulators talk about servicing the so-called “unbanked,” people who are generally disconnected from the banking sector, it often sounds like a mission to do God’s work — bank unto others as thou banketh for thyself. “Basic financial services are out of reach for one in...
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TRAVEL : Memorable working tour at Somalia’s oasis of peace
The courtyard at Mogadishu’s Peace Hotel. Photo Jan Fox By Jan Fox “Don’t worry, we’re not under attack; it’s just an assassination”. As a senior government official’s car exploded a few blocks away from where we were having our meeting, our Somali colleagues carried on talking business and sipped their tea with a composure that...
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Kenya’s retails sector second in sub-Saharan Africa
BY MARGARET WAHITO NAIROBI, Kenya, – Kenya’s formal retail penetration rate, which ranges from 30 percent to 40 percent, is the second highest in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the latest report by Oxford Business Group (OBG), this places Kenya at roughly half the level of South Africa, where formal retail is estimated to stand at...