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Rwanda Borrowed In Yen For The First Time
Rwanda raised about $190 million through a dual-currency commercial loan on 26 August, comprising €82 million and ¥15 billion. The yen portion is the government’s first borrowing in the currency. The 15-year facility has a six-year grace period and will support general budget spending, including infrastructure, health, education and social protection.
A World Bank guarantee, combined with political-risk cover from its MIGA arm, reduces commercial lenders’ exposure. Rwanda has used guarantee-backed borrowing from multilateral lenders before, taking a €200 million ESG loan in 2024 backed by the African Development Fund and a €213 million policy-based facility earlier this year. With public debt at 73.6% of GDP at the end of 2025, Kigali is using multilateral backing to reach commercial capital on better terms than its own credit would command.
Source: Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning · Ecofin Agency
MTN Took A Minority Stake In A Gulf-backed Data Centre Venture
MTN has formed Africa Data Hub Holding with Dubai-based investor Tarek Al Ashram, who is backing it through his own investment firm and co-founded the Gulf Data Hub group. The first phase targets 150 megawatts of capacity for artificial intelligence workloads in South Africa and Nigeria, building on MTN’s existing sites in Gauteng and Lagos. The capacity will serve MTN’s own workloads and be rented to cloud providers, enterprises and governments wanting their data held domestically.
Chief executive Ralph Mupita said MTN’s approach is to partner with third parties holding the necessary skills, and that MTN will hold only a minority stake, with Al Ashram’s platform providing the bulk of the capital and technical expertise. Africa holds less than 1% of global data centre capacity. A larger Microsoft and G42 project announced for Kenya in 2024 has yet to open.
African Regulators Proposed One Certificate For Cross-Border Trade
The 32nd General Assembly of the African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO) met at Mombasa from 24 to 28 August under the theme “Standards Enabling Intra-Africa Trade under the AfCFTA: One Certificate Working for You”. The proposed framework would allow products certified under agreed African standards in one country to enter other participating markets without repeat testing, intended to cut compliance costs for smaller manufacturers in particular. The assembly was relocated from Kampala in July because of the Ebola outbreak.
The scheme depends on national regulators accepting each other’s laboratories. Kenya Bureau of Standards director general Esther Ngari said the challenge is building trust, and that a manufacturer should not have to prove a product repeatedly once testing is done. She also called for stronger testing facilities across the continent, another constraint. Rwanda demonstrated the difficulty this month, suspending more than fifty imported brands from six countries, four of them East African Community partners.
Source: The Coast · ARSO · tralac
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