Business & Tech News
Egyptian Bank Sell Off Announced: Egypt is aiming to sell $3.6 billion in state assets denominated in U.S. dollars in the current financial year ending in June2025, as part of an $8 billion financial agreement it signed with the International Monetary Fund in March. It also agreed to divest additional assets worth 0.5% of gross domestic product denominated in either U.S. dollars or Egyptian pounds. As part of the process, Egypt’s central bank aims to sell shares in state-owned United Bank in an initial public offering on the Egyptian stock exchange by the end of March 2025, according to a statement released on Sunday. No indication of what the size of the offering would be take would be and said that it was still seeking approvals from the stock exchange and the Financial Regulatory Authority. United Bank increased its total assets to $2.2 billion at the end of June from 72 billion pounds in 2021, the central bank statement said.
SpaceX to Mars Mission within Two years: According to a message from SpaceX owner Elon Musk yesterday,SpaceX plans to launch about five un-crewed Starships to Mars in two years. The statement says that should those all land safely, then crewed missions would be possible in four years. According to Musk It is only possible to travel from Earth to Mars every two years, when the planets are aligned. This increases the difficulty of the task, but also serves to immunize Mars from many catastrophic events on Earth. No matter what happens with landing success, SpaceX will increase the number of spaceships traveling to Mars exponentially with every transit opportunity. He believes that “The fundamental existential question is whether humanity becomes sustainably multi-planetary before something happens on Earth to prevent that, for example nuclear war, a super-virus or population collapse that weakens civilization to the point where it loses the ability to send supply ships to Mars”. SpaceX will this week launch its Dragon Spaceship, to take the NASA Crew-9 to the international space station after the worlds first successful commercial spacewalk recently.
World’s Largest Football Stadium in Africa? Images of the planned 115,000 crowd capacity Grand Stade Hassan II that is to be built near Casablanca in Morocco have been released. The stadium could be the world’s largest football stadium and potentially the location for the final of the 2030 World Cup final that Morocco will be co-hosting with Spain and Portugal. There are however still questions over its cost, and funding and how it will be built. It is unclear, at this point, if there will be private backing sought to assist the funding from state coffers, and there is also speculation about China being involved in the project. China, was responsible for the build of the main stadium for this year’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast. Morocco, was the first African team to be World Cup semi-finalists in 2022.
Market News
Markets: Friday saw US markets close fairly flat, with the Nasdaq closing -0,24% down, the S&P500 -0,19% down and the Dow Jones 0,09% up. in Asia markets are closed this morning for public holidays.
Currencies: The US Dollar is currently trading softer at 1.116 against the Euro, at 1,332 against the Pound, and at 143,95 against the Yen. The rand has continued its form against the dollar and is currently trading at R17.41
Commodities: Gold remains above the $2600 mark and hit an all-time high of $2630 in early trade this morning and is currently trading at $2,627, while Platinum is currently trading softer at $969 with Palladium holding above the $1000 mark and currently trading at $1054. Brent crude prices have gained a little this morning and is currently trading at $74.85 with WTI trading upwards at $71.38 currently.
Other News in Africa Today
Hope for African Endangered Species: Bio-scientists have potentially found a way to save the worlds most endangered species – The Northern White Rhino with a total world population of two aging females who both cannot bear offspring. Professor Thomas Hildebrandt from the BioRescue project performed the successful transfer of a Southern White Rhino embryo, that had been fertilised by previously frozen northern white rhino sperm into a surrogate mother. The embryos were created using sperm that had been frozen, in some cases decades ago, and egg cells from one of the remaining female Northern White Rhinos. Half of the embryos are kept in Berlin; the other half are in Italy. If scientists are successful with artificial transfers into Southern White Rhino surrogates, it may be possible to slowly rebuild the Northern White Rhino population. “We are here today with 33 embryos. We have a lot of embryos available, and we estimate that we can produce about 10 to 15 babies. That means these babies will, of course, also produce new egg cells. The program could then continue indefinitely,” explains Hildebrandt.
UN Future Pact Adopted: Secretary-General Antonio Guterres singled out a number of key provisions in the Pact of the Future, the 42-page document that was adopted at the opening day of the two-day “Summit of the Future” called by the U.N. Secretary-General, challenges the leaders of the 193 U.N member nations to turn promises into real actions that make a difference to the lives of the world’s more than 8 billion people. The Pact of the Future includes a compact that commits leaders to establish an Independent International Scientific Panel in the United Nations to promote scientific understanding of AI, and its risks and opportunities. It also commits the U.N. to initiate a global dialogue on AI governance with all key players. The pact also commits world leaders to reform the 15-member Security Council, to make it more reflective of today’s world and “redress the historical injustice against Africa,” which has no permanent seat, and to address the under-representation of the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America. The compact commits leaders to establish an Independent International Scientific Panel in the United Nations to promote scientific understanding of AI, and its risks and opportunities. It also commits the U.N. to initiate a global dialogue on AI governance with all key players.
