Seven Checks to Run Before You Clean a Food-Service Kitchen
A food-service kitchen is not an office with a stove in the corner, and cleaning it as though it were is how a cleaner ends up implicated in a closure that was not her fault. When Mpika Town Council shut seven bus-station restaurants in January 2026, the senior health...
What Lusaka’s Health Permits Really Say About Cleaning
For a business in Lusaka, cleanliness is not a matter of appearances. It is a condition of the permit that lets the doors stay open. A health permit is not paperwork you file and forget; it is the council's judgement that your premises are safe to trade from, and it...
Pool-House Reform Opens the Door to More Homeowners
Public housing schemes tend to fail at the same join: they build the houses but withhold the ownership. A tenant who can occupy a state-built home but never own it is a tenant forever, with no stake to maintain and no asset to build on. The reform of Botswana's...
P558m Road Contract to Spur Rural Mobility
Botswana's road map tells two stories at once. One is of a well-connected spine — the highways linking Gaborone, Francistown and the major centres are real and serviceable. The other is of the gravel and dirt that still separates many rural settlements from that...
Kazungula Bridge Authority Formalised, Strengthening Botswana–Zambia Ties
Cross-border infrastructure in Southern Africa rarely fails for want of steel. It fails for want of a clear answer to a duller question: once the bridge is built, who runs it, who bills for it, and who carries the legal authority to keep it open. The Kazungula Bridge...
Bui Dam: How Ghana Bought 400 MW on Commercial Terms From China
Ghana built the Bui hydropower dam to escape blackouts. Its US$292 million Chinese loan carried a 6.1 per cent rate and no grant element – a power-capacity story priced like a mortgage.
The Hall as Hard Asset: China’s Conference Centres and the Business Climate
A refurbished hall in Yaounde looks like a gift. Read as infrastructure, China’s conference-centre diplomacy is a quieter bet on Africa’s business environment.
A Roof Counted Twice: China’s Africa Housing, Seen From the Household
Social housing rarely makes the China-Africa ledger. In Djibouti two parallel schemes show what the household-facing side of infrastructure actually delivers – and what it leaves uncounted.
Small and Beautiful: China Recasts Africa Deals Around Airports and Grids
Beijing once measured its Africa ledger in mega-loans. The deals it signed with Chad and Senegal in 2024 are smaller, narrower and aimed at the everyday grid.
From port to inland market: the Northern Corridor’s longer arithmetic
Mombasa to the interior is the showcase corridor. The harder economics sit in the dry-season roads of Kenya’s north, where a day’s trip should take hours.
Small towns on the line: corridor infrastructure as a growth enabler
Flagship corridors are sold by capital-city endpoints. The quieter story is what happens to the towns the road passes through on the way.
Bridges as Multipliers: Mozambique’s 3km Span and Its 4% Debt
Africa’s longest suspension bridge cut a six-hour journey to 90 minutes across Maputo Bay. It also left Mozambique repaying a US$785m loan at 4% – a multiplier of commerce, and of debt.
Roads First: How 100,000km of Chinese-Built Tarmac Reshaped Africa
China’s foreign ministry counts nearly 100,000km of highways built across Africa. The headline rail projects get the attention – but roads, quieter and more numerous, did the heavier lifting.
TAZARA Reborn: A US$1.4bn Bet on Reviving Africa’s Mao-Era Railway
China built TAZARA in the 1970s as a gift of solidarity, then watched it decay. A US$1.4bn deal now revives the line – this time as a 30-year commercial concession, not a present.
Abuja Light Rail: A Capital’s Metro That Opened, Stalled, Then Reopened
Nigeria’s capital launched the country’s first urban rail in 2018. It then sat largely idle for years before service resumed in 2024.
Addis Ababa Transit: A Metro Built for the Industrial City It Awaited
The light rail’s southern line was routed deliberately toward factory districts. The transit arrived; the industrial boom it anticipated arrived more slowly.
Addis Ababa Light Rail: Africa’s First Metro and the Bill After the Ribbon
Sub-Saharan Africa’s first light rail opened in 2015 to genuine acclaim. Within a decade it needed rescuing from its own decline.
Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway: The Export Line That Trucks Keep Overtaking
A 753-kilometre electric railway was built to carry a landlocked nation’s trade to the sea. Eight years on, much of that trade still goes by road.
Beyond the freight line: Kenya’s commuter rail revival rides in the SGR’s shadow
The SGR was sold on cargo. The harder transport problem – moving Nairobi’s commuters – runs on a separate, older network now being rebuilt with different money toward 100,000 riders a day.
Mombasa-Nairobi SGR: a US$3.6bn corridor reset that still has to pay for itself
The SGR cut Mombasa-to-Kampala cargo time from 18 days to three. It also handed Kenya its largest-ever loan, equal to about 6% of GDP, and a railway that has run at an operating loss.