🔅 Depreciating Currencies
and empty universities
Markets Today
📉 Johannesburg Stock Exchange: 13,129.01 (-1.12%)
— Nigerian Stock Exchange: 49,644.92 0.00(0.00%)
📈 Nairobi Securities Exchange: 147.27 (+4.68%)
📉 S&P 500: -16.07 (-0.41%)
📈 Shanghai Composite: 3,246.29 (+0.09%)
🇰🇪 Kenya: Following the calm completion of a hotly disputed presidential election, international economists somewhat improved Kenya's GDP projection for this year, which helped the Nairobi Stock Exchange rise. This year's economic growth is expected to be 5.5%, down from the 7.5% recorded last year mostly because of the rising cost of living and the growing public debt stress situation.
Currencies to further depreciate, as USD strengthens
Foreign Exchange
According to a Reuters survey of currency analysts, emerging market currencies will struggle to make up ground lost this year as the dollar continues to rise due to the Federal Reserve's constant rate hikes and demand for safe-haven assets. On Tuesday, amid mounting concerns about a worldwide recession, a stampede into the dollar caused the wider index of emerging market currencies to drop to its lowest level in two years.
The Chinese yuan, which is down roughly 9% this year, is impacting developing market competitors more than ever before and might have a significant impact on their performance in the upcoming year, according to FX analysts.
Headlines
Across the Continent
🇿🇲 Zambia seeks further relief from IMF: The country is seeking $8.4 billion of debt relief from 2022 to 2025, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday in a report on the first African nation to default on its debt in the pandemic era. Last week, the IMF approved a $1.3 billion, three-year loan to Zambia. The fund said there were “sufficient assurances” from creditors and the government to bring its debt, which the IMF said reached 133% of GDP at the end of 2021, to a sustainable level.
🇿🇦 South Africa's economy contracted back to pre-pandemic size in the second quarter, weakened by floods that disrupted operations and the country's worst-ever power cuts. The contraction will provide renewed concerns for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has been under pressure to lift the growth rate. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0. 2% year-on-year unadjusted in the second quarter.
🇳🇬 Nigeria's federal universities have been empty for more than six months, with students prevented from attending classes due to a protracted standoff between the state and teachers who declared an indefinite strike in late August. The main staff union initially called the strike on 14 February demanding more funds for higher education, which has been neglected for decades.
Around the World
FBI found document on foreign nuclear defences at Mar-a-Lago
During its investigation of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI discovered a document outlining the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. The more than 11,000 government documents and images that FBI agents retrieved from Donald Trump's Florida estate last month have not been made public, but prior reporting from The Washington Post suggested that among the items federal authorities were looking for were classified documents about nuclear weapons.
According to the Post article, among the information retrieved by the FBI were records describing top-secret US operations that necessitated further certifications "on a need-to-know basis" in addition to top-secret clearances. Trump has received the approval of a federal judge for the appointment of a special master to examine the papers taken from Mar-a-Lago on August 8.