North Africa

Sudan's Army said Sunday that it had retaken control of el-Gitaina from the Rapid Support Forces, located just south of capital. It also broke the siege of the paramilitary groups on the strategic western city of el-Obeid. Last week, activists reported that three days of RSF attack near Gitaina in White Nile State, which is emerging as a major battleground in central Sudan as the army gains territory, had resulted in more than 200 deaths. The conflict that broke out in April 2023 as a result of a power struggle between RSF and army has caused the death of tens...

Investors waited for more details about U.S. president Donald Trump's plans to impose reciprocal tariffs, and were concerned that global trade tensions could escalate. Trump re-invigorated his tariff threats on Friday, warning that auto levies may kick in as early as April 2. Trump also instructed commerce and economic officials in the U.S. to investigate reciprocal tariffs against countries that impose tariffs on U.S. products, with an April 1 deadline for recommendations. Saudi Arabia's benchmark stock index fell 0.5%. The biggest lender, Saudi National Bank, saw a 0.7% drop and ACWA Power dropped 1.2%. Saudi Aramco Base Oil Company also...

The Libyan state agency mandated to manage federal government performance has actually called for suspension of public sector appointments and contracts due to an extreme wage expense. The Administrative Control Authority (ACA) stated the number of public sector staff members in Libya had actually reached 2,099,200, with salary expenses amounting to 372 billion Libyan dinars over the past 12 years. About 89% of Libya's labour force is employed in the general public sector, the World Bank said in a 2024 report, based upon a 2022 study. The authority posted its call on Facebook on Tuesday evening, addressing the Prime Minister...

Libya's easternbased federal government said in a statement on Wednesday that it had agreed on a proposal to end fuel subsidies and would prepare a. system to implement the contract. The administration headed by Osama Hamad, a competitor to the. worldwide acknowledged government based in Tripoli, did not. reveal further information about the proposition. It is unclear if Hamad's federal government will have the ability to. execute the proposal in the divided nation, nevertheless. In OPEC-member Libya a litre of fuel expenses simply 0.150. Libyan dinars ($ 0.03), the second-cheapest on the planet. according to the Worldwide Gas Rates online...

Turkey can step in to deal with disagreements in between Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, President Tayyip Erdogan informed the head of Sudan's sovereign council Abdel Fattah alBurhan in a telephone call on Friday, the Turkish presidency stated. The Sudanese army has consistently implicated the UAE of providing weapons and support to the paramilitary Quick Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan's war. The Gulf state denies this. U.N. sanctions displays have referred to as reputable accusations that the UAE had given military aid to the RSF. Erdogan went over Turkish-Sudanese relations along with regional and worldwide matters with Burhan in...

Most stock markets in the Gulf increased in early trade on Thursday in line with Asian shares as financiers mulled the ramifications of a Donald Trump presidency. Trump was elected president, topping a remarkable comeback 4 years after he was voted out of the White Home and ushering in a brand-new American leadership likely to evaluate democratic organizations at home and relations abroad. Saudi Arabia's benchmark index got 0.4%, with Al . Rajhi Bank rising 1.5%, while oil huge Saudi Aramco. innovative 1.8%. In Other Places, Al Moammar Details Systems Co. advanced 2.7%, a day after the firm signed a...

OPEC+ oil supply cuts and recent efforts to unwind them have increased volatility in energy markets and hampered financial investment in brand-new production, the CEO of Italian energy business Eni stated on Monday. Speaking at an industry occasion in Abu Dhabi, Claudio Descalzi said he expected high volatility in the energy markets experienced in recent years to extend into 2025. 8 members of OPEC+, which groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus Russia and other allies settled on Sunday to postpone a prepared December oil output increase by one month due to weak demand in China and rising...

UAE energy giant ADNOC will use extremely autonomous agentic expert system in the energy industry for the first time, in collaboration with G42, Microsoft and AIQ, its CEO Sultan Al Jaber said on Monday at a market event in Abu Dhabi. The UAE, a rich oil manufacturer and longtime security partner of the U.S., is expecting greater access to American technology to develop its own advanced tech market. The push is led by the government-backed G42, which in April got a $1.5 billion investment from Microsoft , which intends to diversify the UAE's economy away from oil. The rapid development...

Major stock exchange in the Gulf were mixed in early trade on Tuesday on weakening oil even as stress intensified in the area and as financiers braced for thirdquarter incomes. Saudi Arabia's benchmark index dropped 0.1%, struck by a 0.9% fall in ACWA Power and a 0.6% fall in the nation's most significant loan provider, Saudi National Bank. Somewhere else, oil giant Saudi Aramco relieved 0.4%. Oil costs - a catalyst for the Gulf's financial markets - slid as much as $3 to a near two-week low throughout Asian trade on the back of a weaker demand outlook and after...

Most stock exchange in the Gulf were subdued in early trade on Wednesday with dispute in the Middle East the most pressing concern, although the Qatari index was buoyed by Qatar National Bank. An escalation of fighting in Lebanon and the ongoing one-year-old war in between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has actually raised fears of a wider Middle East conflict. The decline in Gulf markets started after Iran launched a. missile barrage on Israel on Oct. 1. Israel has actually sworn to. strike back and is weighing its alternatives, with Iran's oil. centers considered a possible target. Saudi Arabia's...

Libya was preparing to reboot oil production that has actually been shut considering that late of August after a contract on a brand-new head of the central bank was reached, 2 oilfield engineers informed Reuters on Tuesday. We are now awaiting orders from the Corporation (the. state oil company) to resume production at its typical levels after. a month-long stoppage, stated an engineer from the Jalu 59. oilfield. An engineer from the Elfeel oilfield stated they took. benefit of the almost one-month closure to perform. maintenance. National production and export operations were dropped in. August when the parallel government in...

Abu Dhabi's economy grew 4.1% in the second quarter of 2024, according to preliminary government price quotes, driven by nonoil sectors as the citystate accelerates efforts to diversify away from hydrocarbons. The United Arab Emirates capital's gross domestic product (GDP) in Q2 reached 297 billion dirhams ($ 80.87. billion), according to the government stats centre, and the. contribution of non-oil sectors stood at over 55%, the highest. in about ten years, at 164.2 billion dirhams. Non-oil GDP rose 6.6% in Q2, significantly outshining. in general GDP growth, led by increases in construction,. production, and finance and insurance coverage activities. The...

The vault, which stores food crops seeds from all over the world in caves created by humans on an isolated Norwegian Arctic island, will receive 14,000 more samples on Tuesday. In 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was created as a backup to the gene banks around the world that store genetic codes for thousands of species. The vault, protected by permafrost and ice, has received samples all over the world and played an important role in the rebuilding of seed collections that were damaged in the Syrian war between 2015 and 2019. In a press release, Crop Trust Executive...

According to Agriculture Minister Ahmed El Bouari, the number of cattle and sheep in Morocco has decreased by 38% since the last census was conducted nine years ago. This is due to successive droughts. Six years of droughts in Morocco have caused massive job losses and forced the country to accelerate its desalination plan. El Bouari, a reporter, told reporters that rainfall this year was 53% less than the average for the past 30 years. He said that there was not enough pasture to feed livestock, and consequently the meat production dropped. This led to a rise in imports of...

Italian aerospace company Leonardo and agroindustrial group BF signed a deal with the federal government on Friday to offer farming jobs to numerous African countries as part of Rome's. development plan for the continent. The accord becomes part of the so-called Mattei strategy, a group of. initiatives aimed initially at helping financial growth in 9. countries consisting of Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria, which. the Italian federal government hopes will curb immigration flows. This month Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stated her government. would extend the four-year strategy to Angola, Ghana, Mauritania,. Tanzania and Senegal, bringing the variety of countries to...

Morocco will keep providing subsidies for crushing wheat imports until completion of April 2025, state grains firm ONICL said on Monday, recommending the nation will continue to import wheat as drought strikes domestic supply. Morocco has actually imported wheat greatly in the previous 2 years after succeeding poor crops, making it a major export outlet for the European Union and, significantly, Russia. The decision to extend the subsidy plan that was due to end in December was made by Morocco's financing and farming ministries, and ONICL will set out more information later, the firm stated in a statement on its...

The deputy director of Chad's National Meteorological Agency waggled his finger up and down to demonstrate how a stationary humidity gauge at the company's headquarters ought to have been working. The damaged hygrothermograph was amongst the dustblown outside devices in the capital N'Djamena that is suggested to assist the company called ANAM to track weather condition patterns. The situation in Chad is duplicated throughout much of Africa, a. continent sorely doing not have the trusted forecasts that are a. keystone of disaster management as climate modification makes severe. weather more frequent. At COP29 environment talks on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General. Antonio...

Ivory Coast will develop a $500. million green financing fund to support sustainable development. efforts, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated in a. statement. Africa's 54 countries have borne the force of climate. change, despite releasing far less contaminating emissions than the. industrialised world. They receive just 1% of annual global. climate finance. Ivory Coast's new center will be developed under the. African Green Banks Effort, a platform working to create a. $ 1.5 billion community of green investment facilities by 2030 on. the continent. The facility will be capitalised by public sources such as. the Ivory Coast's government, the...

Destructive rains that activated deadly floods in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan in current months were gotten worse by humancaused environment change, a. team of international scientists said on Wednesday. Global warming made the seasonal rainstorms this year about. 5-20% more extreme across the Niger and Lake Chad basins, said. World Weather Attribution (WWA), a group of scientists studying. the link between climate change and severe weather. It also said such intense rains could occur each year if. warming continues. Spells of heavy summer season rainfall have actually become the brand-new typical. in Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad,...

Colombia wants to write a. combined environment and biodiversity pledge, seeking to combine. efforts to protect nature with those to deal with environment change in. United Nations talks, Colombian Environment Minister Susana. Muhamad told Reuters on Friday. The South American nation later this month will host the. U.N. COP16 biodiversity top aimed at halting the fast. damage of nature, with Muhamad acting as the conference's. president. The United Nations presently has 3 ecological. conventions - one each on climate change, biodiversity, and. desertification - with negotiations and pledges being done. independently on each problem. That is a requiring process for...

The European Court of Justice ruled on Friday that the European Commission had breached the right of individuals in Western Sahara to selfdetermination by concluding trade deals with Morocco. Western Sahara, a system of desert the size of Britain, has been the scene of Africa's longest-running territorial disagreement given that colonial power Spain left in 1975 and Morocco annexed the area. Friday's decision is the last judgment after numerous appeals by the Commission, the European Union's executive arm. The EU signed fishing and farming contracts with Morocco in 2019 that also covered products from the Western Sahara. The authorization of...

Spanish lending institution BBVA and U.S. investor KKR stated on Friday they had formed a tactical partnership concentrated on investments connected to the world's climatedriven transition to a lowcarbon economy. BBVA will invest $200 million in KKR's Global Environment Strategy, the business stated in a joint declaration throughout New York Environment Week, and the effort will also check out finding climate infrastructure-related financial investments. We are positive that the second part of this years will see strong development of brand-new low-carbon facilities. It is an enormous opportunity, said BBVA's worldwide head of sustainability and business & & financial investment banking...

Morocco's central bank on Tuesday left its benchmark rates of interest the same at 2.75%,. saying borrowing expenses followed the financial and. financial outlook. Morocco's economic development would drop to 2.8% this year, from. 3.4% in 2015, due to dry spell, the bank stated in a statement. after its quarterly board conference. The bank added that it expects growth to speed up to 4.4%. next year, assuming an average cereals harvest. Inflation would slow to 1.3% this year from 6.1% in 2023,. before up ticking to 2.2% in 2025, following a drop in unpredictable. food prices. These figures stay shrouded...

Wildfires in Bolivia are now operating on a track to set an alltime record, latest satellite information reveal, with fire hotspots todate overtaking the rate in the exact same duration during major blazes in 2010 as the wider South American area burns. Satellite data from Brazil's area research study firm Inpe showed that Bolivia had 70,628 fire hot-spots up until Sept. 22, putting it ahead of the number in Jan-Sept 2010. That year ended up with a record 83,119 hot-spots. Over the weekend, help from the European Union, consisting of an Electra Tanker 481 water bomber and Plane BK117 D3...