Africa

1. S. Africa misses GDP target…
2. … and builds ties with Brazil
3. Iran war hits airlines
4. Ghana’s gold royalties change
5. Saudi-US Africa fund
6. Miner blamed for health crisis

Designer showcases traditional Gabonese material on Paris runways.

S. Africa misses growth projections

South Africa’s economy grew 1.1% in 2025, missing expectations and underscoring the challenges facing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration in tackling a long list of urgent tasks amid geopolitical shocks.

Though expansion was the fastest in three years, Africa’s most industrialized economy has hardly grown in more than a decade, leaving it with crumbling infrastructure and the need to create jobs in a country where one in three are unemployed. The government has launched the biggest post-apartheid overhaul of the electricity and rail networks in a bid to attract private sector capital to tackle these challenges.

Further clouds are on the horizon: Nedbank, South Africa’s fourth-largest bank, warned that the Iran war “could again lead to a global supply-side shock,” which could “stoke inflation and force the central bank to reverse course.” The finance ministry already said this week it may have to revise its fiscal plan as a result of the conflict.

— Tiisetso Motsoeneng

S. Africa, Brazil seek to bolster ties

South Africa’s president courted business leaders during a two-day state visit to Brazil aimed at bolstering trade ties with Latin America’s biggest economy amid upheaval sparked by US tariffs and the Iran war. President Cyril Ramaphosa called for the expansion of a trade agreement between southern African countries and a Latin American bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. He said he wants to position South Africa as “Brazil’s gateway into African markets.”

Brasília and Pretoria have each been the target of President Donald Trump’s wrath: He imposed steep tariffs on Brazil over what he said was the unfair prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, his political ally. Though levies were later lowered, the risk was sufficient for Brasília to seek partners elsewhere. Trump also increased tariffs on South Africa, which he has accused of discrimination against white South Africans, claims that have been widely discredited.

Ramaphosa’s visit comes as fears grow that the Middle East conflict may force Pretoria to reassess the budget announced three days before the US and Israel launched strikes on Tehran.  

Iran war hurts African airlines

The war in the Middle East is hitting African airlines, some of which are already reporting losses over flight cancellations and rising operational costs. Ethiopian Airlines, the continent’s largest carrier, said it incurred a $137 million loss in a single week, Business Insider reported. The state-owned airline has suspended flights to 10 destinations in the region this month. Other African carriers like Kenya Airways, Air Tanzania, and RwandAir could experience similar operational setbacks in the coming weeks, including disruption to the price of aviation fuel as oil costs rise.

The shortfall is prompting some international carriers to add services to Asia and Africa which bypass Middle East hubs: Germany’s Lufthansa said it is offering several extra flights, including two between Frankfurt and Cape Town, citing rising demand for “long-haul flights at short notice.”

Ghana changes gold royalty system

Ghana’s gold regulators introduced a new sliding‑scale royalty rate that rises in line with bullion prices, despite opposition from China, the US, and mining executives. Africa’s top gold producer, like governments across the continent, is trying to ​capture more value from surging commodity prices.

Under the new system, miners will pay the government 12% of gross revenue earned from gold sales when the precious metal hits $4,500 per ounce — it currently trades above $5,000 per ounce — according to details seen by Reuters. It replaces a flat 5% ​royalty rate. Lithium royalties have also shifted to a sliding scale.

African countries have attempted various policies to secure a greater share of wealth from natural resources, such as Mali’s revised mining code which sparked a dispute with Canadian miner Barrick, Zimbabwe’s recent suspension of lithium exports, and DR Congo’s cobalt export curbs. “There is a real potential of an increase in revenue driven largely by the ‘price hikes’ in gold,” Patrick Stephenson, Ghana country manager at the non-profit Natural Resource Governance Institute advisory body, said of Accra’s new policy. He told Semafor other nations may adopt Ghana’s approach as a model.

— Alexis Akwagyiram

US-Saudi venture eyes African minerals

A US-based investment firm and a Saudi family-owned conglomerate plan to raise a “multibillion-dollar” fund to invest in critical minerals projects in Africa and secure offtake for processing in America and Saudi Arabia, the firm’s leaders told Semafor.

Cove Capital and Tariq Abdel Hadi Abdullah Alqahtani & Sons (AHQ) will formally launch the fundraising in June, targeting sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, and governments. They will seek out investments in copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare earth mines, and are already considering several potential deals, Pini Althaus, chairman and chief executive of Cove Capital said in an interview. “The goal is to reinforce US and Saudi national security by building safe corridors for the materials crucial for the global high tech economy,” he said.

The two firms will be general partners in the fund, Abdulmalik Tariq Alqahtani, AHQ’s chief executive, said. AHQ will also invest in developing three new critical minerals processing facilities in Saudi Arabia, he said.

— Matthew Martin

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Chinese miner blamed for health crisis

Expansive mining operations in DR Congo by the world’s largest cobalt production company sparked a health crisis in host communities that included pneumonia and stillbirths, an investigation found.

Chinese company CMOC produces nearly half of the world’s cobalt, via operations across two mines in Lualaba province in southeast DR Congo. Residents of one of the mine’s surrounding communities have contracted severe respiratory illnesses following continued exposure to levels of sulfur dioxide gas in the air “well in excess of international standards,” the report found, based on a review of more than a thousand medical records.

The company, whose growth has doubled annually over the past five years, expanded a plant as large as the size of 500 soccer fields to produce 30,000 tons of copper-cobalt mixed ore daily. But that expansion was “at the heart of the public health crisis that has allegedly harmed nearby communities and the workers who labor in the facility,” according to a three-year study by Environmental Investigation Agency US, a Washington non-profit, and PremiCongo, a non-profit in DR Congo. CMOC, responding to the findings, said concentrations of the gas were within applicable regulatory limits and there was no data to support a link between the mine’s expansion and health in local communities.

— Alexander Onukwue

Business & Macro