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The Africa Brief appeared in The Rest Is Politics this week. Thank you for making the Briefing a success.

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• Africa CDC. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is facing issues with its Director General, Dr. Jean Kaseya. Dr. Kaseya has been accused of harassing and intimidating staff. The organization has defended him, calling the complaints “baseless” (Devex).

• Amhara State. A human rights watchdog has raised concerns about the deteriorating security in the Ethiopian state. Some 2 million people require health aid (UN News).

• Cape Verde. Reports emerged of 60 people perishing after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Cape Verde in west Africa (BBC).

• Chad. Niger’s junta-appointed prime minister made an unannounced visit to neighbouring Chad this week to shore up ties with a fellow Sahel state. Chadian President Mahamat Déby is a key regional player who visited Niger days after the coup last month (Vanguard).

• SADC. Southern African heads of state descend on the 43rd Southern African Development Community Summit in Luanda, Angola (The Namibian).

• ECOWAS. West African leaders said they have ordered the immediate deployment of a “standby force” ready to intervene in Niger, sticking with their threat of military action (DW).

• Iran. South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, says there is no intention to build BRICS into an ‘anti-West’ bloc despite the ‘strong possibility’ of Iran attending the summit at the end of August (News24).

• Mineral Export Bans. Zimbabwe and Namibia are pursuing mineral export bans (Zawya). More further on in the Brief.

• MTN x Mastercard. Two pieces of news. First, MTN is adding 20,000km (12,400 miles) of new fiber cable to ten countries in its African network. It plans to roll out 135,000km of fiber by 2025, which it expects will net $1bn in revenue from faster mobile services. Second, Mastercard has bought into MTN’s mobile money (Reuters). More further on in the Brief.

• Museveni v World Bank. Uganda’s long time leader, Yoweri Museveni, said the World Bank is trying to ‘coerce us into abandoning our faith, culture, principles and sovereignty, using money’. The Bank has withdrawn loan facilities from Uganda over its homophobic legislation (BBC).

• Niger. The military government vowed to prosecute Mohamed Bazoum, the deposed president, for “high treason” (France24).

• Toyota. Ethiopian officials are lobbying Japanese carmaker Toyota to resume plans to build a manufacturing plant in the country after a deal signed in 2020 was halted due to Ethiopia’s two-year-long civil war (Reporter).

• Zimbabwe’s ‘White Gold’. Major lithium projects in the country are drawing the attention of foreign investors and governments alike (Foreign Policy).

In context: Despite an overall deceleration of forest loss, the entirety of Africa is still showing an increase in the rate of deforestation. Why does this matter? The Congo Basin forests of central Africa are the world’s primary tropical carbon sink, absorbing more carbon than the Amazon and Southeast Asia combined. The forests are estimated to already contain between 25-30 billion tonnes of carbon – roughly equal to four years of current global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The forests absorb an estimated 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually – approximately 4% of global carbon emissions, offsetting more than what is emitted by the entire African continent annually (Mo Ibrahim Foundation).

In big news, Mastercard has agreed to take a minority stake in the financial technology unit of South Africa’s MTN, Africa’s biggest mobile company by subscribers, valuing the arm that covers payments and remittances at more than $5bn (Financial Times).

Foreign Policy reports on an emergent trend in Southern Africa where Zimbabwe and Namibia are restricting the export of raw minerals. Zimbabwe’s ban, called the Base Minerals Export Control Act, prevents the country losing billions in mineral proceeds to foreign companies, officials said. Namibia has followed suit; and in 2020 around 42% of African nations, excluding those in North Africa, had implemented restrictions on raw exports, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria.

These mineral export restrictions are going to run up against Africa’s biggest trader and lender — China. Beijing enjoys almost total control on the world’s critical mineral supply chain. Over the past few years, Chinese-owned companies have spent more than $1 billion acquiring and developing lithium projects in Zimbabwe.

Chinese minerals giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt opened a $300 million lithium processing plant at its Arcadia mine in Zimbabwe, which it bought last year from Australia-based Prospect Resources for $422 million (Reuters). The plant currently has the capacity to process around 450,000 metric tons of lithium concentrate annually.

In May, Chengxin Lithium Group, commissioned a lithium concentrator to produce 300,000 metric tons per year at the Sabi Star mine in eastern Zimbabwe. China’s Sinomine Resource Group said last month it had completed a $300 million lithium facility, after it bought Bikita Minerals, one of Africa’s oldest lithium mines, for $180 million (Foreign Policy).

In South Africa, Chinese and South African business leaders closed some high value deals as of late – companies like Sappi and Glencore recently signed numerous mineral deals worth over $2bn dollars. The two companies met ahead of the BRICS summit slated for the end of this month. South Africa's Minister Patel of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition said the move indicates the next phase of engagement between the countries — “a deeper, closer partnership with China to strengthen industrialisation in SA and to assist transitioning to a greener our economy” (Fin24).

Zambia’s Constitutional Court found its Parliament in breach of the Constitution for not passing legislation ensuring the full financial independence of the judiciary. In a decision underpinned by the principle of judicial independence and the rule of law, the court ordered that until these laws have been passed and put into effect, the Minister for Finance should report to Parliament every six months on what has been done to ensure financial independence of the judiciary (Zambia Judgement).

The African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has donated US$750,000 worth of equipment to the South African government’s Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA). This was the first disbursement of its kind since the African Union launched its Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) in April of 2021. PAVM aims to support the growth of African vaccine manufacturing, an industry which currently supplies less than 1% of the continent’s demand.

It is hoped that this initial technological investment in supporting national vaccine regulation and safety standards will be the first step towards PAVM’s ambitious agenda of African states producing 60% of the continent’s vaccine needs by 2040 (Africa CDC; Devex).

The WHO is set to have its first high-level Global Summit on traditional medicines this week in India, parallel to a simultaneous G20 Health Ministerial meeting (WHO). Representatives from governments, NGOs, and CBOs from across Africa are expected to be in attendance at the Global Summit and health ministers from the G20 will engage in a joint dialogue at the summit on Indigenous knowledge and traditional medicine and their roles in improving health and generating new economic activity (WHO). With the use of so-called ‘traditional medicine’ widespread across most of the world, the WHO’s Summit will discuss ways to advance the science of the industry, support and protect indigenous knowledge, advance participatory forms of medicine development, and maximise the potential for traditional medicines to reduce health inequity (WHO).

The New York Times reports that the military takeover in Niger has upended years of Western counterterrorism efforts in West Africa. The coup presents real challenges for the Biden administration’s fight against Islamist militants on the continent, especially in the Sahel, the semiarid region south of the Sahara where groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State are quickly gaining momentum.

South Africa’s Knife Capital has reached the final use of its $50 million fund (TechCrunch). With seven exits across both funds (including Visa’s $110M acquisition of fintech startup Fundamo and orderTalk’s acquisition by UberEats), Knife Capital will be aiming to replicate the same for its third fund as it supports its international expansion.

The Cape Town-based VC plans to invest in 10-12 firms using this fund, with an average cheque of $3 million (the remainder saved for follow-on). So far it has invested in DataProphet, a South African AI-as-a-service business, and Kasha, a Rwandan health access platform. In an interview, CEO Van Zyl discusses why Knife Capital made those investments, its strategy for new investments (at least five by year’s end), and his overall perspective of the local growth-stage VC scene.