Africa

1. Inside S. Africa’s budget
2. Africa’s AI summit
3. Flutterwave eyes profitability
4. US names Africa envoy
5. Nigeria’s new state oil chief
6. Botswana hunting revenues

Zambia’s climate-resilient chickens.

Hello! Welcome to Semafor Africa where we try not to play tit-for-tat. This morning business executives in the US — and in Africa — are bracing for what our colleague Liz Hoffman describes as “the most dramatic shift in US trade policy in decades.” The Trump administration’s move away from multilateralism and tariff-free trade has all but spelled the end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the trade pact currently used by around 30 African countries to export goods into the US on preferential terms. AGOA requires reapproval by the US Congress this September. Its prospects are not looking good.

As Zainab Usman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace points out, US trade with Africa has been outshone by that with China over the past two decades: Last year US-Africa trade came in at less than $80 billion, while trade with China hit $292 billion. But Africa can’t afford to shut its doors on the US, W. Gyude Moore of the Center for Global Development told me. “I think for most African exporters, it is less about China replacing the US and more about diversity in export markets,” he said.

Power struggle behind SA budget drama

South Africa’s Parliament is scheduled to vote on the country’s highly contested budget on Wednesday, amid ongoing uncertainty over the status of negotiations between the coalition government’s two biggest parties.

Hours before the spending plan was due to be presented, officials in the Democratic Alliance, the second-largest party in the coalition, told Semafor they did not intend to back the revised spending program. But it remains possible for the budget to be passed if the African National Congress secures the support of smaller parties.

A power struggle between the DA and ANC over control of key sectors in Africa’s most industrialized economy — including port and rail infrastructure — is central to the dispute, three people familiar with the matter told Semafor. They said the DA also wanted the country’s controversial land expropriation law, which has drawn Washington’s ire, to be amended.

The impasse over the budget, which was first due to be presented in February, has become the sternest test faced by the national unity government since it was formed nine months ago.

Africa’s AI ambitions

Artificial intelligence is taking center stage in Rwanda this week as more than 1,000 policymakers, business leaders, and interest groups gather for the first-ever global AI summit focused on Africa.

The two-day event starting on Thursday in Kigali will feature a speech by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and comes amid ambitious plans to make AI applications mainstream in Africa. Last week Cassava Technologies, a group owned by the Zimbabwean billionaire and summit co-chair Strive Masiyiwa, announced plans to build a cluster of data centers in South Africa by June, using chips from the US manufacturer Nvidia. And in December, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei launched its cloud services in Nigeria.

A number of African governments are designing policies to court long-term investment — especially in cloud and fiber optic networks — and develop local talent. Nigeria and South Africa have both floated AI policy frameworks in the last 12 months. Rwanda unveiled its guiding document in 2022.

Flutterwave eyes profitability

Flutterwave, Africa’s most valuable unicorn, won’t rule out the possibility of selling to a larger player, its CEO told Semafor, but stressed that the fintech player is focused on reaching profitability this year.

The company, which provides software for businesses to collect card or bank transfer payments online, has in recent years discussed the potential of an initial public offering. But with a valuation of more than $3 billion, after raising around $500 million since its 2016 launch, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola said Flutterwave was open to the possibility of being acquired by a larger player.

“Yes, we’re open,” Agboola said, but “our goal is to be profitable this year.” He added that the company aimed to provide “stability” to achieve its mission.

US names Africa senior adviser

Massad Boulos, a businessman who is the father-in-law of US President Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany, has been appointed the State Department’s senior adviser for Africa.

Boulos is set to travel to DR Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda starting Thursday, the US State Department announced, with the aim of advancing peace talks in eastern DR Congo and promoting US private sector investment in the region. Semafor was first to report that Boulos was likely to get a position focusing on the Great Lakes region, where the conflict in eastern DR Congo and the prospects of a critical minerals deal with Kinshasa are high on the agenda. The region is likely to remain his key priority in this role, a US official told Semafor.

Boulos already serves as senior adviser to the president on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, focusing on Lebanon, the country he migrated from as a teenager.

Nigeria’s new state oil chief

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu overhauled the leadership of the state oil company, replacing its long-serving chief executive with a private-sector veteran. A new board was also installed as the company moves towards an initial public offering.

Bayo Ojulari, a former head of Shell’s deepwater and exploration operations in Nigeria, becomes NNPC’s group CEO today. He replaces Mele Kyari, who was appointed by Tinubu’s predecessor in 2019. Kyari’s exit had been widely speculated about since Tinubu’s election in 2023, talk that intensified after he passed the mandatory retirement age of 60 in January.

Kyari’s tenure coincided with a turbulent period for Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, marked by struggles with oil production. The output shortages in Africa’s top crude exporting nation have stifled Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings, sparking onshore asset divestments by international oil companies including Shell, Eni, and TotalEnergies.

— Alexander

Botswana’s hunting revenues

The amount Botswana generated from the sale of licenses to hunt wild animals last year, up from $2.7 million in 2023, according to the environment minister. It comes amid escalating concerns over the impact of Western import bans on wildlife trophies. Last year, Botswana — home to the world’s largest elephant population — threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and Britain in protest over planned restrictions.

Opponents argue that trophy hunting can harm wildlife populations. But blanket bans “risk pushing trade underground, exacerbating poaching and impoverishing communities reliant on wildlife economies,” Shylock Muyengwa from Resource Africa told Semafor. A recent Oxford University study found that legal trophy hunting was not a major threat to any of the 73 species and subspecies imported to the UK.

— Madeleine Wright

Tosin Eniolorunda, Co-Founder and Group CEO, Moniepoint Inc, will join top global leaders at Semafor’s 2025 World Economy Summit, taking place April 23-25, 2025, in Washington, DC. As the first major gathering since the new US administration took office, the summit will feature on-the-record discussions with more than 100 CEOs.

Bringing together leaders from both the public and private sectors — including congressional leaders and global finance ministers — the three-day summit will explore the forces shaping the global economy and geopolitics. Across 12 sessions, it will foster transformative, news-making conversations on how the world’s decision-makers are tackling economic growth in increasingly uncertain times.

April 23-25, 2025 | Washington, DC | Learn More

Business & Macro

🇰🇪 Kenya’s inflation rate rose to 3.6% in March, marking a six-month high. Rising prices of food, especially tomatoes and potatoes, contributed significantly to the increase.

🇳🇬 Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund reported a profit of $1.2 billion in the 2024 financial year, a 59% rise from the previous year, on the back of gains from foreign exchange movements.

Climate & Energy

🇺🇬 Uganda will offer 60% of the stake in a local oil refinery to Alpha MBM Investments, a UAE-based company, while state-owned Uganda National Oil Company retains the remaining shares.

Geopolitics & Policy

🇬🇳 Guinea’s ruling junta scheduled a constitutional referendum for Sept. 21. The military seized power in Sept. 2021 and has missed a number of deadlines it set for a return to civilian rule.

🇧🇫 Burkina Faso’s junta pardoned 21 soldiers convicted for their roles in a failed coup in September 2015. They will be able to rejoin the army.

Tech & Deals

🇿🇦 South Africa’s asset management company Public Investment Corporation invested $40 million in infrastructure investor Africa50.

🇿🇦 Steel maker ArcelorMittal will delay the closure of its South Africa operations to August after receiving $91.5 million from the government’s Industrial Development Corporation, the company’s second-biggest investor.

A partnership between a nonprofit and a private company is trying to help Zambian farmers breed chickens that lay more eggs. The Zambro initiative — a tie-up between the Atlanta-based World Poultry Foundation and Lusaka’s Hybrid Poultry Farm — aims to create viable businesses. Zambro chickens are bred to withstand tough climates, The New York Times reported, important in a country facing increasingly extreme weather and one of the highest rates of malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. Developing a self-sustaining model is key to WPF’s strategy.

Elon Musk’s move to combine the social media company X with his xAI puts an official corporate stamp on a de facto combination in which both companies already shared talent and resources in a drive to catch up in the hypercompetitive AI industry, Semafor’s Reed Albergotti writes.

The all-stock deal valued the firehose of conversation once known as Twitter at $45 billion and the maker of the chat bot Grok at $80 billion, Musk announced on X.

The transaction effectively turns anyone who invested in Musk’s bid for Twitter (it later changed its name), into a shareholder of xAI, which will use the social media company’s data for training AI models and as a distribution pipeline for Grok.

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.

— Alexis Akwagyiram, Preeti Jha, Alexander Onukwue, and Yinka Adegoke.