The World Bank’s private investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is significantly expanding its local-currency lending across Africa. This strategic move aims to solve a critical bottleneck: helping promising projects grow large enough to attract major global asset managers, such as BlackRock, which typically avoid investing in assets less than $1 billion. With concessional finance shrinking and aid from wealthy nations declining, local-currency lending can also protect African countries from exchange-rate volatility. This approach, which already makes up 30% of the IFC’s portfolio, is part of a broader push to mobilize private capital. The IFC is further deepening its commitment by…
Author: Montage Africa
By Fabrice Zagbayou* Mobile money is changing its face in Côte d’Ivoire. Remember… a few years ago, all it took to disrupt the market was a simple prepaid card or a low-cost transfer service. Wave broke the rules with free deposits and unbeatable fees. Djamo democratized card access for everyone. Orange Money and MTN massively banked previously excluded populations. The simple business of transfers or cards is no longer enough But today, the game is being played elsewhere. Wave has taken a major step forward with the creation of Wave Bank Africa S.A., with a capital of 20 billion FCFA.…
Film Africa 2025 will feature a curated selection of films across genres, from feature films to documentaries and shorts. The festival opens with My Father’s Shadow, a Nigerian drama by Akinola Davies Jr., exploring political tensions during the 1993 Lagos elections. It will close with Katanga: The Dance of the Scorpions, a Burkinabé film inspired by Macbeth, awarded the Yennenga Golden Stallion at FESPACO. The lineup also highlights cinema from the Democratic Republic of Congo, showcasing films that explore cultural identity, memory, and historical legacies. Cultural Diplomacy and International Reach Film Africa serves as a cultural bridge between the UK, Africa, and its…
Tim Godfrey is not your conventional gospel artist. In the 2000s, at a time when Nigerian gospel largely depicted brooding, praise-led inspiration, he was already fusing Afrobeats with messages of God and His word, joining other Afro-gospel songs you should know. “If you know me well, I’m always the one that breaks ceilings,” he tells OkayAfrica. “The one that dares to go where everybody is avoiding or afraid of. Everything about me has always been about amplifying things I believe we need for the next generation.” When he released his first Afrobeats album in 2006, it was “totally rejected,” he shares, “and people…
Lagos Fashion Week means a lot of things to a lot of people. Community, a fashion playground, space for discovery and to be discovered, a melting pot of the African style and culture, a space for unbridled creativity, and perhaps most importantly, one of Africa’s most important red carpets. For a decade and a half, Lagos Fashion Week, an annual multi-day fashion experience founded by Omoyemi Akerele, has confidently transformed Lagos and, by extension, Nigeria, into a formidable fashion capital. Through a large-scale runway show featuring different designers, off-site shows, masterclasses, workshops, sustainability programs, and talent development initiatives, LFW has situated itself as…
Every day, OkayAfrica shares a roundup of news we’re following but haven’t published as full articles. These short updates cover what’s happening on the continent — in culture, politics, and beyond. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has begun gathering evidence of mass killings and sexual violence following the Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) capture of El Fasher, the last military stronghold in Sudan’s Darfur region. The ICC, which has investigated Darfur atrocities since 2005, said it is taking “immediate steps” to preserve evidence amid reports of summary executions and ethnic targeting. More than 70,000 people have fled the city, while nearly 200,000 remain trapped…
By Rédaction Africanews with AP The United States says it is working with both the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to secure a humanitarian truce. This follows a sharp escalation in bloodshed in the conflict after RSF fighters captured the North Darfur region’s capital, al-Fashir, following an 18-month siege. There have been widespread reports of atrocities committed against civilians and humanitarian aid workers in the city by the group. The war in Sudan started in April 2023 when tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, spreading across the…
By Rédaction Africanews There were mixed reactions in Lagos on Monday after US President Donald Trump said he’d ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria, as he stepped up his allegations that the government is failing to rein in the persecution of Christians in the West African country. Trump also warned that he “will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria.” The warning came after Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu earlier on Saturday pushed back on Trump, announcing a day earlier that he was designating the West African country “a country of particular concern”…
By Rédaction Africanews with agencies Guinea’s military leader, Mamady Doumbouya, will stand as a candidate in the country’s first presidential elections since he seized power in a coup in 2021. The general handed in his documents at the Supreme Court on Monday, the last day for submitting candidacy in the 28 December polls that are meant to restore constitutional order. Despite a promise when he seized power that he would not run, a new constitution submitted by the junta and approved in a September referendum opened the door for him to do so. The charter replaced arrangements agreed to after…
By Rédaction Africanews with AP A global hunger observatory on Monday confirmed famine conditions in the Sudanese city of al-Fashir which fell recently to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as well as in Kadugli, another besieged town in southern Sudan. The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has previously only confirmed famine in camps for displaced people around the North Darfur capital, al-Fashir. Thousands of civilians are continuing to flee the city to surrounding towns including Tawila, Melit, and Tawisha following its capture. They have described their harrowing experiences under the 18-month siege. Displaced person, Habib Allah Yakoub, said…