Weekly Signals, on the record
Every weekly Signal, kept as a dated, citable record. Money, government policy, technology, and the world-economy shifts that change your next move. Subscribe by RSS.
Africa's largest mobile money business lists in London on 14 October and will not receive a dollar of it, because the exit was contracted five years ago. Underneath it, almost every large Nigerian fintech spent this year buying a bank.
Read the Signal →Two central banks moved in opposite directions inside six days. The Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023. Nigeria then cut by 350 basis points. One move is what it looks like. The other is not.
Read the Signal →Drones hit Saudi Arabia's main Hormuz bypass on 10 September. Within nine days it had lifted a British energy cap, a Nigerian pump price and an American diesel record, and helped take a fifth of a trillion shillings off the Nairobi exchange.
Read the Signal →The ECB hiked on Thursday and the Fed may follow on Wednesday. Nigerian treasury bills went the other way, clearing almost ten points below the policy rate. The gap is real, and the money holding it open can leave in a week.
Read the Signal →Access to America got cheaper, energy got dearer, and money is about to cost more. All three prices are set in dollars. If none of your income is, that gap is now your largest exposure.
Read the Signal →Jackson Hole made payments its theme, but the stablecoin rulebook is being drafted in comment files, not on a stage. The continent with the most operating evidence is not in the room.
Read the Signal →Africa's youth bulge is the most agreed-upon idea in African macro. That consensus is the risk, because it is held as an inevitability when the institutions that own it call it a window that has to be earned.
Read the Signal →American technology firms are committing close to $700 billion to AI infrastructure this year. Africa holds roughly 0.6 percent of global data centre capacity, and the binding constraint is power rather than capital.
Read the Signal →A weak payroll print cracked the dollar and opened a financing window onto Africa. It is a debt window, and a debt window chooses its own winners.
Read the Signal →Development finance did not leave Africa. It changed instrument, from equity to debt, and that quietly changed which companies are fundable at all.
Read the Signal →Consensus says the Fed's next move is a cut. Put the odds of a hike on 29 July at roughly one in three. That is not the base case, and it is far too high to ignore if you are pricing dollars.
Read the Signal →US power is a service system. It profits by sitting where everyone else has to settle, and the African version of that position is not another rail.
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