Ghana Financial News

Founded in 2020 by banking industry veterans Dominic Duru, previously of RBS and Citi, and Khalid Talukder, previously of UBS, Citi & Deutsche Bank, DKK specialises in emerging markets (EM) and foreign exchange (FX) liquidity. The firm last raised a £3 million pre-seed round in September last year at a pre-money valuation of £100 million. DKK has seen its flow rise to $1.3 billion in transactions in the last year with Ebitda reaching an impressive $2 million. The firm has also opened dedicated offices across all key markets, including London, Dubai, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Senegal. Earlier this year, DKK received initial approval from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) to offer Virtual Asset Broker Dealer Services. As part of the deal Meridien Holdings will help the firm to scale up its operations by supplying complementatary technology to help drive efficiency and distribution of its products and services.

Malaria vaccine: Ivory Coast has become the first country to deploy a malaria shot developed by Serum Institute of India Ltd., the world’s largest vaccine maker, and the University of Oxford.The first doses of the R21 immunization were administered on Monday to children in Abidjan, the commercial capital of the West African country, the developers and their partners said in a statement — the second malaria vaccine to go into use.“The new vaccine has been authorized by Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic, and many others are preparing to receive shipments," they said in the statement. A total of 656,600 doses have been received, which will initially vaccinate 250,000 children from newborns to 23 months across 16 regions of Ivory Coast.The vaccine was recommended in 2023 by the World Health Organization for use in Africa for children under five years old, the age group there that bears the brunt of a disease that kills more than 600,000 people per year.

Ghana at first looks like a series of linked hearts, but on closer inspection, I notice a stylised bird. I learn that this is the Sankofa, a mythical bird from their culture that flies forward while looking backward, with an egg held in its mouth. The word Sankofa derives from the Akan people, a West African ethnic group that resides in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. The Akan, over centuries, developed a highly artistic and communicative system of ideographic and pictographic symbols, each representing a specific concept or proverb rooted in the Akan experience.... Their beliefs were handed down mostly orally through proverbs and stories, or through pictorial symbols. A proverb from which the concept and meaning of Sankofa is derived declares, 'It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.' It speaks of bringing good from the past into the present and progress through the benevolent use of knowledge.

visa applications in 2023. Out of the 151,752 visa requests filed by Indian nationals, a substantial number were denied. This led to an estimated loss of €12.1 million in visa application fees for Indian applicants, highlighting the financial burden on those attempting to travel to Schengen countries. In 2023, Schengen states rejected a total of 1.6 million visa applications, resulting in €130 million in generated funds, according to SchengenNews. Among the affected nationalities, Indian applicants faced significant financial losses due to high visa rejection rates. Other nationalities facing high rejection rates included Turks, Algerians, Moroccans, and Chinese. Turkish nationals experienced the highest monetary loss, with €13.5 million spent on rejected visa applications. Algerians followed closely, losing €13.3 million, while Moroccans lost €10.9 million, and Chinese applicants faced losses of €4.8 million despite having one of the highest approval rates.

The government of Zimbabwe is looking for input on digital asset regulation as it begins to develop its own crypto framework while navigating a challenging inflation crisis, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

East African nation Rwanda aims to create its own retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) to assert its significance in the global economy’s future landscape by 2026.

military officials from the U.S. and its top African allies watched intently as dust and flames shot up from pieces of the Sahara Desert hit by tank and artillery fire. They looked up as pilots flew F-16s into formation. And they listened intently as Moroccan and American personnel explained how they would set up beachheads to defend the Atlantic coastline in the event of a potential invasion. The practice scenario was among those discussed during African Lion, the United States' largest annual joint military exercise on the continent, which concluded Friday in Morocco.

A new report has found that billions of dollars in gold is smuggled out of Africa each year and most of it ends up in the United Arab Emirates, where it is refined and sold to customers around the world

Click here to read more Mukesh Ambani is set to enter Africa with a telecoms venture, seeking to win mobile broadband customers in a high-growth market, Bloomberg reported.Radisys Corp., a unit of Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Ltd., will provide key network infrastructure, applications and smartphones for Ghana-based Next-Gen InfraCo., according to Harkirit Singh, the executive director of NGIC. He described the plans ahead of NGIC’s launch announcement on Monday in Mumbai, India’s financial hub.

Mint that further investments will be made in the coming years.“The Ghanaian government is an enabler of this initiative, which will bring digital services, e-learning and mobile finance products to the country. It will not be the one fuelling investments though—that will be enabled through the PPP model of NGIC," Owusu said.

Africa as in India. It is the second-biggest telecom company in the continent after South Africa's MTN. Fourteen years ago, Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal took the brave decision to go to Africa and it has been a perilous journey for his company. Africa, where Mittal had expected to map India's telecom growth story onto the continent, turned out to be little like India with its sparse population as well as political volatility which would discourage any pioneer telecom company. Now that Airtel Africa seems to be out of the woods, and having acquired an elephantine footprint in 14 countries across the continent, a big challenge might be shaping up. Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries (RIL), who disrupted India's telecom market with low tariffs and cheap handsets by launching Reliance Jio in 2015 and swept aside Airtel to become the market leader, is acquiring a tiny foothold in the African telecom market as a telecom tech and equipment vendor. Also Read: RIL's Mukesh Ambani set for African safari with 5G tech solutions

Mukesh Ambani is set to enter Africa with a telecoms venture, seeking to win mobile broadband customers in a high-growth market.Radisys Corp., a unit of Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Ltd., will provide key network infrastructure, applications and smartphones for Ghana-based Next-Gen InfraCo., according to Harkirit Singh, the executive director of NGIC. He described the plans ahead of NGIC’s launch announcement on Monday in Mumbai, India’s financial hub.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) entity is set to offer a range of 5G shared network infrastructure solutions in Africa with a local company backed by Ghana, marking the conglomerate's entry into the league of global telecom tech and equipment vendors. Radisys, owned by RIL unit Jio Platforms Ltd (JPL), along with Tech Mahindra and Finland's Nokia, is partnering with Next-Gen Infrastructure Co. (NGIC), in which the Ghanaian government, Ascend Digital and K-Net hold equity, for the foray.

Vice President Kamala Harris is announcing the formation of a new partnership to help provide internet access to 80% of Africa by 2030, up from 40% now

Internet-enabled phones can play a unique role in sub-Saharan Africa, where infrastructure and public services are among the world’s least developed

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of His Majesty Otumfuo Osei Tutu II’s reign, Ghana Post launched a collection of “Crypto stamps” linked to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on May 9. The initiative blends Ghanaian cultural heritage with cutting-edge blockchain technology, offering a unique way to celebrate the King’s Silver Jubilee.

Mint with a rueful smile. She may be playing a huge role behind the scenes of India’s national election, the largest democratic exercise in the world, but for all that, 42-year-old Vishalakshi is a simple, unassuming person. The post-graduate in organic chemistry, who also heads the quality department of the company, is responsible for ensuring that the ink leaves an indelible mark on the voter, one that will remain for at least 72 hours.

German security technology group Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) is partnering with the Central Bank of Mauritania to explore the design and development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) dubbed ‘digital Ouguiya.’

cocoa prices soaring 140 per cent since the start of the year have caused speculations that chocolate might vanish due to climate change or other crises. But we have been here before. Back in November 2014, I wrote in ET about chocolate companies predicting potential shortfalls of a million tonnes of cocoa by 2020. And four years before, in 2010, Anthony Ward, a UK-based commodity trader briefly cornered the market by acquiring 240,000 tonnes of cocoa, driving up prices to a 33-year high. It got him dubbed ‘Chocfinger’, after the James Bond villain Goldfinger who tried to corner gold. Chocolate’s real problem is that it is particularly vulnerable to market manipulation. Cacao beans only grow in a narrow band along the equator. The main producers, like Ivory Coast and Ghana, have had to deal with climate change and diseases, but the biggest issue is that the production is done by thousands of small farmers who lack leverage over the market. Price rises barely benefit them. This is why the production of cocoa has struggled to take off in India. In 1957, The Times of India reported that cacao imports cost the country ₹seven lakh per annum: “Consequently a few enterprising planters are experimenting on introducing the plant to India.”

Cocoa and coffee futures reached new highs on mounting concerns of extreme weather, while aging trees in Africa cocoa crops and Vietnam coffee areas added to concerns. “Speculators are drawing parallels between cocoa and coffee, which is a bit surprising,” Rabobank analyst Carlos Mera said, adding that trees getting older in Vietnam is one of the reasons coffee production in the country is not expanding. New York cocoa futures rose to the highest in data going back to the 1960s, extending a rally driven by declining production in top-growers Ivory Coast and Ghana. Gains for most-active contract accelerated after prices broke the $10,000 mark, a level that hasn’t been seen since almost two weeks ago.

Odisha were a country, its economy would be larger than Tanzania's, Sri Lanka's or Ghana's. The state has nearly bridged the gap with the national per-capita income. In 2003, its per-capita income was 60% of the national average, and today, it's close to 90%. This convergence was possible as Odisha's economy grew faster (7.4%) than the national average (6.2%). Its population growth rate has slowed to 0.6% a year, compared to 0.9% for the nation. Growth momentum has been evident across sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing and services. Additionally, at nearly 10% of its economy and growing at 8% annually, mining has contributed to the state's economic well-being and robust public finances. Thanks to mining royalties, the state has a unique fiscal advantage. It collected non-tax revenue to 3.5% of its GDP a year, compared to 1% for an average Indian state during the last decade.