As Ghana prepares to pump oil in the second half of 2010, hopes are rising, both among hard-pressed market traders at home and in the far-flung Diaspora, where Ghanaians are quitting jobs in American banks to head back to an optimistic homeland.
Oil was found off Ghana’s coast in 2007 and, even without further discoveries, is now expected to earn an average of $1.2 billion in annual state revenues for almost two decades.
For a country with 23m people and a GDP of $16 billion, it could be a big boost – or a crippling blight.
Perky economic growth, a decent human-rights record, and changes of government by the ballot box in 2000 and 2008 have made Ghana one of the past decade’s success stories in Africa. Read the rest of this entry »
ExxonMobil has agreed to acquire a large stake in Ghana’s Jubilee oil field from its private equity owners, paying about $4 billion for one of Africa’s most potentially lucrative oil discoveries in recent years.
In one of the toughest global economic downturns in decades, the African continent continues to be one of the leading foreign direct investment destinations for U.S. businesses, according to the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA).
Skye Bank, one of the top 10 banks in Nigeria, has undertaken to implement the SAS Money Laundering Detection solution across its organisation. Skye Bank is one of the industry leaders in Nigeria. It is a publicly quoted company with over 500,000 shareholders, and operates out of over 250 branches and transaction centres across Nigeria, serviced by over 6,000 professional bankers and business experts with a N1 trillion ($7 billion) balance sheet.
