Prospects for African economies and the development of mobile payments in Kenya
According to the World Bank, Senegal’s economy will grow 8% in 2023 and reach 10.5% in 2024, thanks to a thriving oil and gas industry. The country aims to earn US$1.4bn in oil and gas revenues by 2025. Senegal’s growing mining sector produces phosphates, gold, mineral sands, manganese and clay, among other minerals. Less spectacular economic growth is expected to be recorded by Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon. Excluding Nigeria, the economies of West and Central Africa will grow by 5.0 per cent in 2023 and 5.6 per cent in 2024. With many African currencies losing value against the US dollar in 2022, however, low export capacity and inflation will persist on the continent.
Due to eight years of stagnant work and lacking financial support from China, Uganda has cancelled China Harbour Engineering Company’s contract to build a strategic 273-kilometre normal-gauge railway from the Kenyan border to Kampala, the country’s capital city. Ugandans would like to sign a new contract with Yapi Merkezi, a Turkish company building a railway in Tanzania. Uganda hopes the company will help it find financiers for the project.
Kenyan banks want to take over part of the mobile money market captured by M-Pesa – Safaricom’s mobile phone-based financial services. M-Pesa dominates the African mobile money market and is widely used by small businesses and individuals in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.
