Jacko Maree, CEO of Standard Bank Group, tells The Banker about the strategy that is leading it to expand into markets well beyond its South African home base.

Its ambitions in the mobile remittances space have led Vodafone to partner with Citi to extend the service beyond Kenya to provide international person-to-person mobile payments. By Heather McKenzie.

$40bn is needed over five years to finance infrastructure and sustain growth rates in Africa.

National Bank of Kuwait’s (NBK) winning tender bid last month to buy Egypt’s Al-Watany Bank for $516m reflects not only NBK’s regional expansion strategy but also growing confidence in the Egyptian banking system.

Jean-Louis Ekra explains why Afreximbank has introduced a carbon financing programme.

Banks are trying to open up the bond markets in sub-Saharan Africa and one idea being floated is for governments to work together to raise multi-issuer bonds. But are the IMF and aid donors standing in the way of the markets’ development? By Nigel Dudley.

Forty-one banks in the Kenyan banking system (plus three non-bank financial institutions and a building society) at the end of 2006 seems rather a lot, given that Tier 1 capital for the top bank in the country was only 12,375m shillings ($178m) at the financial year end.

By negotiating directly with Africa, China is changing the rules on commodity trading, writes Martyn Davies.

Climbing oil prices may be a headache for the West, but could provide Africa with much needed development revenue.

Primary and secondary Nigerian government bond markets are undergoing structural change with bond indices serving as economic benchmarks. Nick Kochan and Dapo Olagunjo explain.