Sub-Saharan Africa’s hard currency shortages weigh on businesses

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Tuesday (April 6) urged the Libyan government to ensure that the country's ceasefire is maintained and strictly observed.

The head of France's central bank has said he expects the French economy to recover from the pandemic slump by the middle of 2022. The bank is expecting the economy to grow by 5.5 percent this year, after a slump of more than 8 percent in 2020. The April lockdown is also having a limited effect on economic activity, according to the bank's latest report. Meanwhile, French industry is suffering from shortages of key materials such as semiconductor chips, wood and metals, which may cause consumer prices to rise.

In Djibouti, refugees from Yemen, foreign soldiers or Ethiopian truck drivers meet at a thousand-year-old crossroads between Arabia and Africa. Flows of people carrying different currencies. To exchange their forex, they all turn to the woman money changers ply their trade on the capital's street corners.

Europe's biggest economy contracted by 1.8% in the first three months of this year compared with the previous quarter. The coronavirus pandemic has been a major factor slowing growth.

Europe and Africa are to join forces to tackle the pandemic's economic fallout and climate change. Politicians and experts met at an "Africa Roundtable" in Berlin to discuss how to reset their relationship.

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It looks like good news for Germany's economy, but some experts are cautioning against too much optimism. German breweries are also struggling to share the excitement.

Iran's newly-inaugurated ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi vows that his government will endeavour to get US sanctions lifted but will not wait for foreign help to rescue the battered economy.

Despite security threats and growing local resentment, China continues to pump billions of dollars into Pakistan and invest in a wide range of sectors.

For more than six decades, the cocoa that Richard Ambassa Mbassiga harvested from his plantation in central Cameroon faithfully paid for everything his family needed. Irregular rainfall and prolonged dry seasons have since sucked the moisture from the soil, killed cocoa trees, and cut the yield from his farm.

A growing number of entrepreneurs in Cameroon are using the label 'Made in Cameroon' for nationally-made products to encourage consumers to buy local and boost the import-dependent economy.

In the mountains and jungles of southwestern Colombia, rural workers toil doggedly in the coca fields despite the dangers posed by guerrillas and drug traffickers -- and despite the government's anti-drug campaign.