Today’s Daily Brief leads with a Reuters report on a US State Department presentation that mislabelled every country on the African continent, then moves across the economies and institutions that shaped the rest of the day, from a central bank governor’s dismissal in Juba to a mining major’s interim results out of Johannesburg. Ten stories, each grounded in a primary release. If this briefing is useful to your desk, subscribe to Sable Africa for the daily send and the weekend long-form edition.
Rio de Janeiro hosted a US State Department presentation this week at AIDS 2026, the world’s largest AIDS conference, during which officials displayed a map of Africa that mislabelled every country on the continent, Reuters reported today. The map, which carried a digital watermark indicating it had been generated using OpenAI tools, placed Nigeria landlocked in the Sahara, moved Mozambique to the Horn of Africa, and left Cameroon without a labelled shape at all, according to a detailed account from AIDS policy writer Emily Bass, who was in the room when the map was shown on 26 July.
The session covered new US bilateral health agreements now replacing the multi-year PEPFAR planning cycle African governments had operated under since 2022, and several of the officials whose countries were mislabelled were present for the presentation.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir dismissed central bank governor Johnny Ohisa late on Wednesday, Reuters reported today, replacing him with Addis Ababa Othow, who held the post between June and November last year. The removal is the latest in a series of senior government reshuffles under Kiir, and comes as South Sudan’s economy contends with declining oil revenues, recurring cash shortages, high inflation and currency depreciation.
Kenya Power restored electricity to all affected regions by 2am today after a widespread outage on Wednesday night left Nairobi, the Coast region, Mt Kenya and parts of the Central Rift without power, Reuters reported. The utility has not disclosed the cause of the disruption, and separately announced planned maintenance outages for parts of Nairobi, Nyeri, Kwale and Mombasa later today.
South Africa released Anglo American’s 2026 Interim Results this morning through the company’s own investor site. Underlying EBITDA rose 35 percent to $4.0 billion, though the group posted a $0.9 billion loss attributable to shareholders after a writedown on its Steelmaking Coal business ahead of its agreed $3.875 billion sale to Dhilmar. Net debt fell to $8.2 billion from $8.6 billion, and the board declared an interim dividend of $0.23 per share, more than three times last year’s $0.07.
Nigeria’s central bank is conducting its final Treasury Bills Primary Market Auction of July today, offering N700 billion split across 91-day, 182-day and 364-day tenors. No bills are maturing this week, meaning the auction results in a net liquidity withdrawal of N700 billion from the banking system.
Egypt’s business press led this morning on a proposed Real Estate Developers Federation designed to rank firms by project capacity and screen out undercapitalised players from the market. Industry sources cited in the reporting warned the ranking system could entrench the largest developers unless smaller, credible newcomers are given a defined path to scale.
Kenya’s National Treasury published new Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations today, drafted jointly with the Central Bank of Kenya and the Capital Markets Authority. Fintech sector reaction has centred on the compliance bar the regulations set, which favours institutions like Equity, KCB or Co-operative Bank over independent crypto exchanges operating on thinner margins.
Ghana completed its IMF Extended Credit Facility programme this week, with the Fund’s Executive Board approving the sixth and final review and releasing the last $371 million tranche, bringing total disbursements to $3 billion. Ghana moves next to a 36-month Policy Coordination Instrument, a non-financing arrangement, and its external debt distress rating was upgraded from in distress to moderate.
Ethiopia’s newest listed bank, Bank of Abyssinia, began trading on the Ethiopian Securities Exchange on Tuesday under the ticker BOAX, the sixth company and one of the first commercial banks to join the exchange since its January 2025 launch. Shares opened at 2,000 birr, a roughly 25 percent gain against the 1,600 birr reference price, with intraday trading touching as high as 3,000 birr.
Tanzania saw the International Finance Corporation list an offshore Tanzanian shilling bond on the London Stock Exchange this month, raising TZS 265.2 billion, the equivalent of $100 million, which IFC describes as the largest shilling-denominated bond ever placed in international capital markets. Proceeds will fund a local currency facility for NMB Bank, with 20 percent ring-fenced for women-owned micro, small and medium enterprises.
