Business

With the Crane Bank being placed under Central Bank management and several other commercial banks being asked to recapitalise, the banking sector in Uganda seems to be under a lot of stress lately. What seems to have brought down Crane Bank does not seem to be a Crane Bank problem …

Algiers, Algeria | AFP |  Algeria’s state energy company Sonatrach on Sunday awarded the China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Corporation (CPECC) a 380-million-euro ($420-million) contract to renovate its Algiers refinery. CPECC, which is affiliated to the China National Petroleum Corporation, will rehabilitate the refinery after Sonatrach severed an initial deal …

Khartoum, Sudan | AFP |  Sudanese security agents seized all copies of three newspapers Sunday, a journalists’ association said, just days after they covered a fuel price hike in reports seen as critical of the government. Members of the powerful National Intelligence and Security Service, or NISS, took copies of …

New York, United States | AFP | New York’s state bank regulator fined the giant Agricultural Bank of China $215 million on Friday for violating anti-money laundering laws and obscuring suspicious transactions involving Russia, China, Afghanistan and other countries. Citing a deliberate failure to scrutinize dubious money transfers, the Department …

The Japan government has given Uganda $2.875 million grant to improve access to income earning opportunities for poor and vulnerable households in Northern Uganda. The grant will benefit 120 existing community groups that were established under the NUSAF2 Project, and support 240 new ones. Groups are to have 10 to …

Lagos, Nigeria | AFP |  The African Development Bank has approved the first installment of a $1 billion loan to Nigeria to help President Muhammadu Buhari combat a “crisis situation”. In a Wednesday press release, the AfDB said that the $600 million loan was the “first tranche of a US …

Munich, Germany | AFP | Chinese electronics firm Huawei on Thursday unveiled its latest Mate 9 smartphone in Munich, designed to challenge global market leaders Apple and Samsung with features including a high-quality camera and higher-capacity battery. As Korea’s Samsung struggles with negative publicity following the high-profile recall of its …

Beijing, China | AFP |  Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s sales soared 55 percent in the last quarter, thanks in part to a more than doubling of revenue from cloud computing, the company said Wednesday. The year-on-year growth in group sales, to 34.29 billion yuan ($5.14 billion), was not matched by …

Wolfsburg, Germany | AFP |  Volkswagen, world champions for the past four years with Sebastien Ogier, said Wednesday they are withdrawing from the world rally championship dealing a major blow to the series. The German auto giants, reeling from the Dieselgate scandal, announced last week that luxury brand Audi was …

San Francisco, United States | AFP | Uber on Wednesday began rolling out an overhauled smartphone application that uses artificial intelligence in a bid to speed up and improve the ride-sharing experience. The update is the first major overhaul for the popular application since 2012 and aims to simplify usage …