United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc has announced the appointment of Mr. Emmanuel N. Nnorom as Group Chairman, ushering in a new chapter of strategic leadership for one of Africa’s leading financial institutions. The appointment brings to the helm a highly accomplished corporate leader whose distinguished career spans more than four decades across banking, finance,...

Two Academy Awards, a Tony, four decades on screen. And, running quietly underneath all of it, a fifty-year debt that one man has spent his adult life paying back in instalments. This is the documented record of Denzel Washington’s philanthropy — what it funded, whom it changed, what it cost, and where the legend around...

How Imane Ayissi — dancer, model, self-taught couturier — became the first sub-Saharan African on the calendar of Paris haute couture, and why he is still the only one I. The dance at the end In July 2026, in the gilded salons of the Aéro-Club de France in Paris, a recorded voice asked the guests...

Among the choices that explain the critical success of the French diptych La Bataille de Gaulle — which, with more than 5 million combined admissions, became the surprise box-office triumph of the French summer of 2026 — one stands out as bolder than the rest: building the entire first part, L’Âge de Fer (“The Age...

Angélique Kidjo, from Ouidah to Hollywood Boulevard Los Angeles, August 18, 2026 It took forty-three years to travel from a stage in Cotonou to a stretch of pavement on Hollywood Boulevard. On August 18, 2026, under the palm trees across from the Roosevelt Hotel, at 7011, Angélique Kidjo unveiled the 2,854th star on the Walk...

In seven months, three CEMAC sovereigns raised roughly $2.52 billion on international bond markets at coupons between 8.9% and 9.5%. In the whole of 2025, Central African companies attracted $27 million in venture capital — 0.7% of Africa’s total. That gap, not the absence of capital, is the region’s real financing problem. AFSIC – Investing...

The money hasn’t left Africa. It has simply become much harder to convince. Institutional investors are no longer asking whether the continent holds promise; they want to know how that promise is being captured, measured and converted into liquidity. Two fund managers — Anza, based in Johannesburg, and Farmties Capital — agreed to describe what...

A payments stack that clears transactions in Lagos will not necessarily clear them in Nairobi. What performs in Accra can stall in Kampala. That fragmentation is the wall most companies hit when they try to scale across the continent — and it is precisely the market Tola Mobile has chosen to occupy. The payments infrastructure...

Africa’s capital markets have become more selective, not smaller — and selectivity puts the pressure on execution rather than on money. Oxford Saïd arrives at AFSIC 2026 as a headline sponsor betting on the input that takes longest to build: people. Foreign direct investment into Africa reached roughly $70bn in 2025, down from an exceptional...

Ask a hundred founders whether they are investor ready and ninety will show you a deck. Fifteen slides, a chart bending up and to the right, a market size with eleven digits. The document is clean. It proves nothing. A deck describes what a company wants to be. Investor readiness describes what it is —...

From IMF-endorsed growth to world-class infrastructure and landmark peace-and-prosperity accords, the Democratic Republic of Congo is sending investors, travelers and the international community one clear message: the country is open, moving, and determined to compete. A vision set at the very top Every transformation starts with a vision. President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo has made the...

Every year, more money leaves Africa illicitly than the continent receives in development aid and foreign investment combined. That money has a face: it is the hospital that was never built, the teacher who was never hired, the road that never reached the border. In July 2026, standing on the unfinished Gabon-Cameroon transborder highway, President...

United Bank for Africa Plc has announced that Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, Group Chairman of UBA, will retire from the Board of Directors of UBA on 21 August 2026, upon the completion of the 12-year tenure limit prescribed for Non-Executive Directors of Banks by the Central Bank of Nigeria. At its meeting held on...

From July 3 to 5, 2026, Château-Gontier-sur-Mayenne will host the third edition of Carré d’Afrique, an international festival celebrating African cultures and entrepreneurship. Three days of connection, discovery, and fellowship, organized by the association Entr’Aide 53 and its president, Lucie Ngalle. A festival that has found its place in Mayenne In just two editions, Carré...

Kenya had never won a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions. This year it did — with a dairy brand that gives its cows the right to call in sick. The idea fixed a stubborn economic problem for smallholder farmers, and crowned a breakthrough week for creativity across the continent. On 26 June 2026, the...

For the best part of a decade, Ousmane Dembélé was football’s most tantalising unfinished sentence — all gift, few moments. Then came a June night in Boston, three goals, and the unmistakable sense that a career had finally caught up with its talent. On 26 June 2026, against Norway, Ousmane Dembélé did something he had...

The 10th edition of the “Doing the Future Together” economic forum, convened by the Elessa Lothin-Sen Foundation, gathered policymakers, central bankers, development financiers and business leaders at the Malimba Club in Bonapriso, Douala, on 11–12 June 2026. Over two days, participants sketched the portrait of a country determined to convert its regional weight into lasting...

At the close of its three professional days, Europe’s largest tech event handed out its prizes — but it was India’s Prime Minister, AI Country Partner of the 2026 edition, who gave the day its clearest message. Paris Expo Porte de Versailles — Friday, June 19, 2026 On the final professional day of VivaTech’s tenth-anniversary...