Africa

1. Cameroon deportation fear
2. Ghana’s new gold regulator
3. Nigeria inflation rises
4. Startup funding drops
5. RSF declares rival regime
6. Cameroon-Chad road
7. Trafficking ants

The song Nigeria just banned.

Cameroonian migrants fear deportation

Cameroonian migrants in the US who face deportation after President Donald Trump terminated their protected status told Semafor they feared for their lives due to conflict in the central African country.

On Friday the US Department of Homeland Security said it was ending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for an estimated 7,900 Cameroonians from June amid a sweeping immigration crackdown.

Ongoing tensions in Cameroon’s minority Anglophone regions have resulted in more than 638,000 people being internally displaced and left at least 1.7 million people in need of humanitarian aid, according to a 2024 Human Rights Watch report. One Cameroonian migrant, who said he fled to the US in December 2022 after his father was murdered, told Semafor he fears for his safety if he was forced back: “President Trump knows there’s war in the Anglophone regions but he wants to deport us.”

A DHS spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Ghana’s new gold regulator

Ghana’s new gold industry regulator ordered all foreign players to exit the local market by the end of the month as the West African country looks to curb smuggling and streamline gold trading by small-scale miners. Africa’s largest gold producer is also hoping to increase earnings further on the back of rising gold prices, up more than 23% this year as investors turn to the precious metal amid economic uncertainty driven by a global trade war. Ghana’s gold exports rose more than 53% last year, making the country the world’s sixth-largest gold producer.

The new regulator, GoldBod, was created this year to better control the local gold supply chain. But critics have questioned whether Ghana’s government, which came to office in January, rushed its implementation. Accra-based analyst Bright Simons, of the Imani Centre for Policy and Education, described GoldBod as an “unwieldy beast” that would struggle to achieve its purported aims of accountability and good governance. “Unless the design issue is addressed, and should the bull market end abruptly, the GoldBod will become a major loss-making pit for public resources,” he told Semafor.

— Yinka Adegoke

Nigeria’s inflation setback

Nigeria’s inflation rate accelerated to 24.2% in March after a slight dip in February, the government’s statistics bureau said, as the Trump administration’s trade war drives up fuel prices.

Food inflation in March was nearly 22%, due to the increasing prices of ingredients such as ginger, honey, and potatoes, according to the statistics bureau. In February, Nigeria’s central bank left the main lending rate unchanged at 27.5% because the bank’s governor said inflation was “trending down.” The next rate review is due in May.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has tried to bring inflation under control in the two years since his energy and currency overhaul sent prices soaring. A $6.8 billion balance of payments surplus in 2024 was a first for Nigeria in three years, and ratings firm Fitch recently upgraded the country’s rating to B, citing the government’s continued efforts in pushing ahead with those policy changes.

African investors back startups

African startup fundraising fell 22% year-on-year to $3.6 billion in 2024, the African Private Capital Association (AVCA) said in its latest report. The dip came despite a 6% increase in global venture capital. Fintech startups took the biggest share with $1.4 billion, while Nigeria was the top destination, accounting for 16% of the total. A bright spot from the past year was that African investors were the largest investing bloc on the continent, AVCA said: Nearly a third of investors in startups on the continent were African in 2024 compared to a fifth a decade ago. This “underscores the momentum in domestic capital formation,” AVCA noted.

Alex Chriss, President and CEO, PayPal; Jenny Johnson, President and CEO, Franklin Templeton; Rich Lesser, Global Chair, BCG; Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder and Chairman, Infosys; Penny Pritzker, Founder, PSP Partners, former US Commerce Secretary; Harvey Schwartz, CEO, Carlyle Group, and more will join The Next Era of Global Growth session at the 2025 World Economy Summit. Amid tectonic shifts to longtime regional trending blocks and friend-shoring, this session will explore how businesses and policymakers are recalibrating their visions of growth.

April 24, 2025 | Washington, DC | Learn More

RSF declares rival government

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces declared the formation of a rival government as the country entered the third year of a civil war that has left tens of thousands dead.

The move came as a UK-hosted summit on the crisis failed to even set up a contact group for ceasefire negotiations after Arab states refused to sign a joint communique, according to The Guardian, which pointed to disputes between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE stands accused by Khartoum of aiding the RSF. In a joint statement, the conference’s co-chairs stressed “the necessity of preventing any partition of Sudan.”

The RSF declaration gives its leaders “the opportunity to cement [the group’s] authority in areas under its control and helps them create the allusion of parity” with the Sudanese Armed Forces, to whom they are losing ground, said Cameron Hudson of the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It risks formalizing the de facto partition of the country.”

Cameroon-Chad connection

The size of an African Development Bank loan to Cameroon to upgrade a road link to its northern neighbor Chad as part of a move to strengthen regional integration. The funds will finance the redevelopment and widening of a 246 km-long section of a strategic trade route between Douala, Cameroon’s commercial center, to Chad’s capital N’Djamena. The modernization aims to “boost cross-border trade,” said AfDB’s Central Africa head, helping to diversify Cameroon’s economy by opening up markets for agricultural and industrial producers in the country’s north.

Ant seizure highlights biopiracy threat

Four men were charged with trying to traffick thousands of live ants from Kenya, including the giant African harvester species prized by collectors in Europe and Asia. The suspects — two Belgian nationals in one case, and a Vietnamese national and Kenyan citizen in another — were charged with illegal possession and trafficking of live wildlife. The Kenya Wildlife Service called it a “landmark case” that “highlights a growing global threat: the biopiracy of native species.”

Pat Stanchev, managing director of the ant-keeping store Best Ants UK, told Semafor he was aware of the illicit trade in the giant African harvester species, known as Messor cephalotes. “Our company has been approached by individuals from Kenya and Ethiopia attempting to sell high-value ant species unlawfully,” he said. The red-colored queen is the world’s largest harvester ant species, measuring up to 28mm in length. She can survive for 25 years.

— Preeti Jha

Business & Macro

🌍 Afreximbank’s total income increased by 23% year-on-year to reach $3.3 billion in the 2024 financial year, as the group’s assets grew nearly 8% to $40.1 billion.

🇿🇦 South African pharmacy chain Clicks Group said its profit grew by 13.2% for the six months up to February this year, partly driven by growth in private label products sales.

Climate & Energy

🇳🇬 Nigerian solar energy provider Arnergy raised $18 million from investors including British International Investment. It previously raised money from Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Geopolitics & Policy

🇲🇱 Mali’s junta closed the offices of Canadian miner Barrick Gold and threatened to seize the company’s assets over tax payment demands, the company said.

🇲🇿 Mozambique’s police and army used deadly force against protesters following October’s disputed presidential elections, an Amnesty International report said, calling for authorities to investigate the killings.

Tech & Deals

🇳🇬 US data center company Equinix plans to invest $140 million in expanding internet access in southern Nigeria, including developing a new landing station for Meta’s 2Africa submarine cable.

🇸🇱 The International Finance Corporation provided a $12 million loan to Sierra Leonean company Pee Cee Holdings for the latter’s agriculture subsidiary to mechanize a 500-hectare onions, maize, and potato farm.

Tell Your Papa, a song by Nigerian rapper Eedris Abdulkareem, leaped to prominence after it was banned by the country’s National Broadcasting Commission last week. The Afrobeats track is a response to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s son Seyi calling his father the nation’s greatest-ever leader. Singing in English, Pidgin, and Yoruba, Abdulkareem tells Seyi to let Tinubu know “people are dying” from economic hardship at a time when the country is grappling with its worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. The NBC urged broadcasters not to air the single, describing it as “objectionable.” Abdulkareem hit back on Instagram: “In Nigeria, Truth and constructive criticism is always deemed as a big crime.”

The escalating trade war between China and the US could boost some American battery manufacturers, amid what is otherwise a major setback for the US energy transition that will hit power utilities and electric vehicle makers that rely heavily on technology imported from China, Semafor’s Tim McDonnell wrote.

If you’re enjoying the Semafor Africa newsletter and finding it useful, please share with your family and friends. We’d love to have them aboard too.

Let’s make sure this email doesn’t end up in your junk folder by adding africa@semafor.com to your contacts. In Gmail you should drag this newsletter over to your ‘Primary’ tab.

You can reply to this email and send us your news tips, gossip, and good vibes.

— Preeti Jha, Alexander Onukwue, and Yinka Adegoke.