Category: Africa

Source: APO

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Market intelligence company Welligence Energy Analytics has been confirmed as an Associate Partner of the African Energy Week (AEW) Conference and Exhibition, taking place on October 12–16, 2026 in Cape Town. The company’s partnership reflects the growing importance of data, analytics and market intelligence in guiding investment decisions across Africa’s evolving oil and gas sector.

Africa’s upstream sector is entering a new phase of growth, with frontier exploration, offshore discoveries and LNG developments expanding investment opportunities across the continent. As governments compete for exploration capital, demand is growing for high-quality commercial intelligence, basin analysis and licensing data to support investment decisions. AEW 2026 provides Welligence with a platform to engage directly with policymakers, operators, financiers and project developers driving Africa’s next wave of energy investment.

Welligence has established itself as a leading provider of upstream data, commercial analysis and market intelligence, supporting governments, operators and investors with asset valuations, basin intelligence, licensing analysis, emissions analytics and commercial benchmarking across global energy markets. Its research and advisory services are increasingly helping stakeholders identify high-potential investment opportunities while improving the competitiveness of African upstream markets.

This expertise is reflected in the company’s January 2026 report, Sub-Saharan Africa: What to Look for in 2026, which identifies Uganda, Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe among Africa’s highest-potential frontier markets, while highlighting continued investment opportunities in deepwater and LNG developments across Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania.

Beyond market analysis, Welligence has expanded its advisory work across West Africa, supporting governments on licensing rounds, mergers and acquisitions, exploration campaigns and fiscal competitiveness. These services are helping countries strengthen acreage marketing strategies, improve bid-round participation and position their hydrocarbon resources more effectively to international investors. As producers including Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Angola pursue ambitious exploration and production targets, data-driven investment promotion is becoming an increasingly important component of attracting upstream capital.

“In today’s upstream market, access to reliable data is a competitive advantage. Welligence is helping governments and investors better understand Africa’s resource potential, evaluate opportunities and deploy capital more effectively. Their participation at AEW 2026 reflects the growing role that market intelligence plays in driving investment across the continent,” stated NJ Ayuk, the Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber.

As Africa’s premier energy event, AEW brings together the policymakers, operators, financiers and service providers shaping Africa’s next generation of oil and gas projects. The participation of companies such as Welligence reflects the growing importance of market intelligence in supporting informed investment and commercial decision-making across the sector.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

Source: APO

Kenya joined the global HIV community at the IAS 2026 Conference, bringing together researchers, policymakers, healthcare workers, communities and development partners to advance the global response to HIV. The Kenyan delegation was led by Director-General for Health, Dr. Patrick Amoth, and included Director of Family Health, Dr. Issak Bashir, Head of NASCOP, Dr. Andrew Mulwa, and other senior technical leaders.

The conference highlighted the central role of science, strong partnerships and community leadership in driving progress against HIV. These pillars continue to guide global efforts to end AIDS as a public health threat.

Kenya reaffirmed its commitment to expanding evidence-based HIV prevention and treatment, including long-acting prevention and treatment options, strengthening resilient health systems and ensuring communities remain at the centre of the national HIV response.

The engagements at IAS 2026 underscored the importance of sustained investment, innovation, equitable access to life-saving interventions and continued collaboration to achieve the goal of ending AIDS by 2030.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Health, Kenya.

Source: APO – Report:

Mintoak (https://www.Mintoak.com/), the payments and engagement OS for acquirers, today announced the acquisition of ICC Loyalty. The acquisition expands Mintoak’s footprint across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia while strengthening its ability to help banks unlock new revenue opportunities beyond payments.

Headquartered in Dubai, UAE, ICC Loyalty provides loyalty and rewards technology to over 30 leading banks. Its platform enables financial institutions to deliver personalised rewards, targeted campaigns and lifecycle engagement programmes that drive customer retention and transaction frequency. Today, ICC Loyalty serves more than 11 million customers across 10+ countries.

The acquisition marks the next phase of Mintoak’s evolution, expanding its capabilities beyond merchant payments and value-added services to include customer engagement, loyalty and rewards, while enabling banks to serve both acquiring and issuing businesses through a unified platform.

The combined business generates over US$30 million in annual revenue with a profitability margin exceeding 30%, providing a strong financial foundation for continued investment in innovation and global expansion. The platform will enable banks to connect merchants, consumers and payment data, turning payment transactions into stronger customer relationships, higher engagement and recurring revenue.

“This acquisition represents a defining milestone for Mintoak,” said Raman Khanduja, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mintoak. “Payments have become the foundation of banking relationships. The next phase of growth will come from engagement. By bringing together merchant engagement, customer loyalty and data-driven intelligence, we are building a payments and engagement OS that enables banks to create greater value for merchants, consumers and banks.”

“Joining Mintoak allows us to integrate their advanced AI and platform capabilities into ICC’s ecosystem, delivering next-generation hyper-personalisation for both our existing and new clients,” said Amit Narang, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, ICC Loyalty. “Together, we will help banks deliver more meaningful customer experiences while creating measurable commercial value.”

The payments industry is entering a new phase of growth. As payment infrastructure becomes increasingly commoditised, value is shifting towards engagement, intelligence and monetisation. Banks have built strong payment infrastructure, but many are yet to fully tap into the monetisation opportunity presented by increasing customer engagement and driving loyalty.

Following the acquisition, Mintoak now partners with more than 50 banks across 20+ countries, including HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and SBI Payments in India, Emirates Islamic and RAKBANK in the Middle East and Absa Bank in Africa. Backed by investors such as PayPal Ventures, British International Investment, Pravega Ventures, HDFC Bank and Z3Partners, its platform supports over 5 million merchants and 11 million customers while powering more than US$93 billion in annual payment volume. The acquisition expands its capabilities across both acquiring and issuing businesses, further strengthening its position across emerging markets.

Together, Mintoak and ICC Loyalty are building the leading Payments and Engagement OS for banks across emerging markets. As financial institutions increasingly look beyond transaction processing, the combined platform will help them deepen customer relationships, unlock new revenue opportunities and drive long-term growth.

– on behalf of Mintoak.

Key contacts:
Khushaal Talreja:
Group Head of Marketing
Mintoak
+91 9768005040
Khushaal.talreja@mintoak.com

Riddhi Sharma:
PR Lead
Jajabor Brand Consultancy
+91 8587804685
riddhi.sharma@jajabor.io

About Mintoak:
Mintoak is the payments and engagement OS for banks, helping financial institutions transform payment transactions into customer engagement, recurring revenue and long-term value. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, the company enables banks to deliver payments, engagement and value-added services through a unified, white-label platform.

Following the acquisition of ICC Loyalty, Mintoak now partners with more than 50 banks across 20+ countries, including HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and SBI Payments in India, Emirates Islamic and RAKBANK in the Middle East and Absa Bank in Africa. It is backed by PayPal Ventures, HDFC Bank, British International Investment, Pravega Ventures, Z3Partners, among other investors.

About ICC Loyalty:
ICC Loyalty is a Dubai, UAE-headquartered loyalty technology company that helps banks and enterprises build customer engagement and rewards programmes. Its platform enables financial institutions to deliver personalised rewards, targeted campaigns and lifecycle marketing that improve customer acquisition, engagement and retention.

ICC Loyalty serves over 30 leading banks across 10+ countries, catering to more than 11 million customers. Its clients include Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Emirates Islamic, Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) and RAKBANK, among others. The company delivers scalable loyalty and engagement solutions across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.

Source: APO

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Today, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi received a phone call from King of the Kingdom of Bahrain His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Spokesman for the Presidency Ambassador Mohamed El-Shennawy stated that His Majesty the King opened the call by expressing Bahrain’s solidarity and sincere wishes to Egypt following the earthquake that struck at dawn today, affirming that the Kingdom stands by Egypt in confronting challenges.

For his part, President El-Sisi expressed his appreciation and gratitude to His Majesty for his kind and noble sentiments towards Egypt and its people. The President also expressed Egypt’s pride, both leadership and people, in the depth and strength of the distinguished fraternal relations with Bahrain, noting the two countries’ shared vision regarding regional issues and crises, as well as their ongoing joint efforts to restore peace and stability in the region.

President El-Sisi further reaffirmed Egypt’s unwavering commitment to supporting and standing by Bahrain on all fronts, expressing Egypt’s unequivocal condemnation of the Iranian attacks on the Kingdom’s sovereignty and stability, and commending the wise Bahraini leadership’s measures to protect the Kingdom’s security and safeguard its people’s resources.

His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa expressed his profound appreciation for Egypt’s steadfast position in support of Bahrain and for its solidarity with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in confronting the challenges imposed by military operations in the region. His Majesty affirmed that Bahrain is exerting every possible effort to achieve peace and reach a sustainable political settlement that preserves the sovereignty of Arab states and the interests of their peoples. The King also underscored Egypt’s pivotal role at both the regional and international levels.

The two leaders discussed developments in bilateral relations, reaffirming the keenness of the two governments to further strengthen cooperation through the implementation of the outcomes of the Bahraini Crown Prince’s visit to Egypt in September 2025, as well as the activation of the outcomes of the second session of the Egyptian-Bahraini Joint Governmental Committee for Economic, Trade, Scientific, and Technological Cooperation, held in Manama in February 2025, as one of the key institutional frameworks for cooperation between the two countries.

In the same context, President El-Sisi praised the care and support extended to the Egyptian community in Bahrain, affirming Egypt’s pride in the contributions of its citizens to the development process in the sisterly Kingdom.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Presidency of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Source: APO

The newly appointed Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy of the United States of America in the Republic of Seychelles, Mr. Christopher Green, paid a courtesy call on the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Mr. Barry Faure, at Maison Quéau de Quinssy on Monday, 3 August 2026.

The meeting provided an opportunity for Minister Faure and Mr. Green to reaffirm the longstanding and cordial relations between the Republic of Seychelles and the United States of America. They exchanged views on a range of bilateral and international issues of mutual interest and discussed ways to further strengthen cooperation between the two countries.

Mr. Green also provided an update on the establishment of the United States Embassy in Seychelles.

The two sides also discussed consular matters of mutual interest, including issues relating to travel and visa arrangements, and reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining an open and constructive dialogue on matters affecting the citizens of both countries.

Minister Faure welcomed Mr. Green to Seychelles and wished him every success in his new assignment. He also expressed appreciation to the United States for the participation of the Topside United States Navy Band in Seychelles’ Golden Jubilee Celebrations, noting that their performance was warmly received and made a valued contribution to the national celebrations.

Both sides reaffirmed their shared commitment to further strengthening the longstanding partnership and cooperation between Seychelles and the United States of America.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Republic of Seychelles.

Source: APO

Across Africa, rural women face a double disadvantage as the urban-rural divide compounds gender gaps in education, employment, asset ownership, and access to financial and digital resources, the latest Afrobarometer (www.Afrobarometer.org) Pan-Africa Profile (https://apo-opa.co/4fK8G9x) shows.

The new report, based on 50,961 interviews across 38 African countries in 2024/2025, shows that women are less likely than men to attain secondary or post-secondary education and to have paid employment. They are also less likely than men to own key productive, financial, and digital assets, including vehicles, bank accounts, mobile-money accounts, mobile phones, and computers. The findings further show that women are less likely than men to report making their own decisions about the use of financial resources.

In addition to these gender gaps, rural women trail urban women by even wider margins on these indicators. In fact, when it comes to access to digital and financial resources, the gaps between urban women and urban men are sometimes dwarfed by those that separate urban and rural women.

The findings point to a notable exception: Rural women report higher levels of participation than urban women in several key types of political engagement, including voting and political party affiliation, suggesting opportunities to strengthen women’s voice and representation in rural communities.

Key findings

On educational attainment and access:

• Across 38 African countries, women trail men in educational attainment: 54% of women have secondary or post-secondary education, compared to 62% of men (Figure 1).
  • Rural women are more than twice as likely as urban women to have no formal education (26% vs. 12%), and only about half as likely to have secondary or post-secondary qualifications (39% vs. 66%).

In the workplace:

• Working-age women are less likely than men to have paid employment (25% vs. 39%) (Figure 2).
  • Rural women lag behind urban women in paid employment (19% vs. 30%), with country-level gaps reaching up to 34 percentage points in Eswatini.

In access to key assets and management of financial resources:

• Women are less likely than men to own key assets, including vehicles (16% vs. 35%), financial assets such as bank accounts (33% vs. 43%) and mobile-money accounts (56% vs. 64%), and digital tools such as mobile phones (82% vs. 89%) and computers (16% vs. 22%) (Figure 3).
  • Gaps between urban and rural women are often even wider, including a 17-percentage-point disadvantage in phone ownership by rural women (73% vs. 90%). Rural women are half as likely to have a bank account (21% vs. 42%) and less than one-third as likely to own a computer (7% vs. 24%) (Figure 4).
• Women (36%) are less likely than men (44%) to say they make their own decisions about how to use their financial resources (Figure 5).
  • They are about twice as likely to say that their spouses decide (10% vs. 6%).
  • In most surveyed countries, rural women have weaker voices in financial decision making than their urban sisters: On average, they are 11 percentage points less likely to say they make these decisions themselves (Figure 6).

In politics:

• Women participate in political activities at lower rates than men. But in several types of engagement, including voting and affiliation with political parties, rural women outpace their urban sisters (Figure 7).

Afrobarometer surveys

Afrobarometer is a pan-African, nonpartisan survey research network that provides reliable data on African experiences and evaluations of democracy, governance, and quality of life. Ten survey rounds in up to 45 countries have been completed since 1999. Round 10 surveys (2024/2025) cover 38 countries.

Afrobarometer’s National Partners conduct face-to-face interviews with nationally representative samples of adults in the language of the respondent’s choice that yield country-level results with margins of error of +/-2 to +/-3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. For more on the sampling methodology, click here (https://apo-opa.co/4xlUcnG).

[1] Here and in all other comparisons of urban and rural women, Seychelles is excluded because the government does not include any urban-rural distinction in its census data.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Afrobarometer.

For more information, please contact:
Josephine Appiah-Nyamekye Sanny
Director of communications
Email: jappiah@afrobarometer.org
Telephone: +233243240933
Visit us online at www.Afrobarometer.org

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Source: APO

The Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Mr Barry Faure received the High Commissioner-designate of the Republic of Malta to the Republic of Seychelles, H.E. Dr Omar Seguna at Maison Quéau de Quinssy on Monday, 03 August 2026.

High Commissioner-designate Seguna noted the cordial relations between Seychelles and Malta and recalled the official visit of the Honourable Dr. Ian Borg, the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Malta in 2023. During the visit, two Memoranda of Understanding in the field of health were signed and a Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation was established. Minister Faure expressed the Government’s wish to reinvigorate relations in health and to explore more sectors in which the two countries can further collaborate.

The Minister shared the Government’s interest in exploring cooperation in the fields of vocational training, digitalisation and renewable energy, fields in which Malta has considerable experience. He also thanked Malta for their assistance in providing capacity building for government officials, especially in the field of diplomacy, adding that several diplomats have benefitted from training opportunities in Malta in the past.

Tourism, maritime affairs, cooperation in the multilateral fora and the Blue Economy were also discussed.

High Commissioner-designate Seguna will present his credentials to President Herminie on Tuesday 04 August 2026.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Republic of Seychelles.