The World's Top 50 Newsmakers

How the companies are rated . . .
In conventional stock market valuation, the worth of a company is rated mainly according to a basic principle: how much profit it makes for its shareholders.

In Africa, where the market economy has not yet fully evolved and where altogether different social conditions exist, the Top 50 African companies shall also be listed by the Africa Almanac web site in terms of their basic productivity and profitability.

However, an additional and key consideration will be how much they foster the improvement of social conditions of the countries in which they are based.

Across much of the continent, the central governments have ceased to be the primary instrument of economic and social development, crumbling as they are to the very core.

In their place have emerged the private companies and multi-national corporations on whom the hope of economic transformation now depends.

In addition, how well the selected companies represent the excellence of Africa, will be an important consideration for listing.

Africa's 100 most recognizable companies
and brand names of 2002
Based on number of pages on the alltheweb.com Internet search engine
Source: Africa Almanac research
As at December 28, 2002

December 31, 2001 --- The South African bank ABSA bought 80 percent of Mozambique's debt-ridden Austral Bank, from the Mozambican government.

January 10, 2002 --- The South African power company, Eskom Enterprises bought a 51 percent share in Zambia's Lusemfwa Hydro Power Company.

January 14 --- The South African restaurant chain Steers was contracted by the U.S chain restaurant group Church to manage the 100 units that Church plans to open in 19 African countries.

January 16 --- A consortium led by South Africa's railway company Spoornet won the rights to operate Mozambique's Ressano Garcia railway line, starting on April 1, 2002.

January 23 --- South African Airways announced the inauguration of flights between Johannesburg and the Danish capital Copenhagen starting on October 2.

January 24 --- The South African gold miner Harmony Gold Mining Company said it had received clearance from the South African Reserve Bank for its $US118.59 million takeover bid for Western Australian gold miner Hill 50 Gold NL

January 25 --- The private Kenyan television station, Kenya Television Network (KTN) said its signal had began reaching the town of Nakuru, 150 km northwest of the capital Nairobi.

The South African mining company Gold Fields closed a deal to take over Abosso Goldfields of Ghana for about 5.8 million dollars, making it the second largest gold producer in Ghana

January 29 --- Toyota South Africa said it would export up to 20,000 new model Corollas a year to Australia in its first export of fully built cars from Africa.

January 30 --- South Africa's petroleum company Energy Africa announced further exploration success in Equatorial Guinea's offshore Rio Muni Basin.

February 4 --- The world's largest gold producer, South Africa's AngloGold, announced that its net profit had increased by 47 percent to 245 million dollars in 2001.

February 7 --- South African Breweries announced that it plans to take over more Indian breweries, in addition to those it already owns.

February 11 --- The South African packaging group Nampak said it had reached two deals with the American packaging firm Crown Cork & Seal, which would expand Nampak's interests in Africa and boost earnings for 2002.

February 14 --- The South African mining group Kumba Resources Ltd reported a large increase in its interim earnings for 2002, saying cost management and the exchange rate would maintain reasonable earnings for the rest of 2002.

February 19 --- The South African food and furniture retailer Shoprite Holdings reported a 28.1 percent rise in half-year earnings and announced a major expansion abroad because of a congested domestic market.

February 25 --- The South African energy company Sasol said it had received the go-ahead for the prospecting of gas offshore the South African Western Cape.

February 28 --- The Egyptian-based mobile phone company MSI Cellular announced that it had acquired LinkAfrica, a satellite telecommunications and data link provider with operations in several African countries.

March 4 --- It was reported that a firm owned by the South African arms maker Denel had began manufacturing a special instant meal which can greatly boost the immune system of HIV-positive patients.

March 5 --- The South African household goods maker Steinhoff International said it is to expand into the European market in 2002, after strong earnings there.

March 7 --- South African Airways said it is to purchase 41 new aircraft from Europe's Airbus over the next ten years.

March 8 --- The Kenyan media group, Nation Media Group, reported a net profit rise of 26 percent, to 3.28 million US dollars, up from 2.6 million dollars in 2000.

March 11 --- South Africa's synthetic fuel producer Sasol announced a first-half operating profit of 47 percent in the six months up to December 31, 2001, and an profit rise to 602 million US dollars.

March 13 --- The South African banking group Stanbic announced strong annual earnings for 2001 of about 19 percent over the previous year.

April 29 --- A new airline, AfricaOne, was launched in Kampala, Uganda, to covering destinations across Africa. It would start with West Africa.

May 7 --- The South African data company Softline announced that it had reached an agreement to buy the Australian company MicrOpay Pty Limited, a leading provider of payroll software for the small to medium sized businesses.

South Africa's Sappi --- the world's largest producer of coated fine paper --- announced results for the second quarter 2002, with sales volumes 9 percent higher than the previous quarter and at the level of the same period in 2000.

May 10 --- The South African bank Nedcor launched its new operations in Singapore..

May 21 --- The South African electronic equipment maker Grintek announced a major export order of about 10 million dollars in a specialized electronic intelligence system to Europe, after entering a partnership earlier in the year with Germany's leading high technology company, EADS Ewation.

May 30 --- South African Breweries announced that it was buying the American brewer Miller Brewing Co, for 3.6 billion dollars in a deal that makes South African Breweries the world's second-largest brewer, after the U.S' Anheuser-Busch.

May 30 --- The largest property dealer in southern Africa, Pam Golding Properties, announced that it had recorded one of its highest ever sales volume, of 603 million rand for the month of April, following its sales results of 5,023 billion rand for the financial year ending February 2001.

May 31 --- Kenya Airways announced in Nairobi that it plans to acquire a 75 percent stake in Air Tanzania. The company said it has ordered three Boeing 777-200 ERs, which are expected to be delivered from 2004.

June 6 --- The mobile phone company MSI Cellular announced that it had created a link between the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, making possible communication across the Congo river border at local rates.

MTN, the second largest wireless phone operator in South Africa, announced that it had reached a deal with IBM of the United States to use IBM software to deliver business data to mobile devices in the South African market.

June 24 --- Kenya's national airline, Kenya Airways, announced plans to expand its flight schedule to the United States market as part of its expansion strategy.

June 25 --- The Kenya-based East African Breweries Limited (EABL) announced that it would acquire stakes in two distilleries, Kenya's United Distillers Vintners and Uganda's International Distillers from Selviac Netherlands, at a total cost of 10.4 million dollars.

June 26 --- Algeria's Khalifa Group signed an agreement to buy the foreign operations of the insolvent German builder Insolvent builder Philipp Holzmann AG, outside of the United States, Austria and the Netherlands. It will adopt the name Philipp Holzmann International Khalifa GmbH.

Algerian state radio said the state-owned oil and gas company Sonatrach had recorded "positive financial results" in the financial year ending in 2001.

July 1 --- South African Airways was named the Best African Airline at a ceremony in the Zimbabwean resort town of Victoria Falls, following a passenger survey by the British firm Skytrax.

July 4 --- Grintek of South Africa and Saab of Sweden announced the formation of a new division under Grintron (Pty) Ltd, a jointly owned defence electronics company, which will be based at Grintek Park in the South African capital Pretoria.

July 12 --- Tanzania's Simba Telecom announced that it would create a special programme to provide jobs to thousands of disabled people in the country.

AFRICA'S TOP 50 BEST COMPANIES
As of July 1, 2001

1. M-Net (South Africa), Pay television. Of the many successful South African companies that are rolling out across the African continent, the pay television service M-Net has got to be one of the three most visible.

M-Net is Africa's largest pay television service, delivering crystal-clear 24-hour programming to dozens of countries across the continent.

However, in a master stroke of public relations, M-Net came up with a concept in 1998 that will guarantee its ever increasing popularity in millions of Africans' minds.

The concept was the M-Net Face of Africa competition, a contest held annually to select a girl who will represent the essence of African beauty, style, and character on the international modelling scene.

M-Net and another South African company AngloGold --- the world's largest gold producer --- introduced the Face of Africa at exactly the right moment, when Africa, having sunk has far as it could get, was beginning to show flickers of better days. Word of an "African Rennaissance" was gaining currency.

Every year, the two South African companies sponsor the M-Net Face of Africa modeling contest, at which a girl is selected to embark on an international modeling career and by proxy, become the defining personality who represents all that is best about Africa.

On the night of May 26 in Sun City, South Africa, the 5' 11" Ramatoulaye Diallo, 20, of Senegal --- a transit officer in the Senegalese capital Dakar --- was crowned the "Face of Africa 2001" in the fourth annual search for the most beautiful new African model.

Said a tearful Diallo, moments after her win which was witnessed by a television audience of 40 million in Africa, Europe, and parts of the United States: "I am very honored to have the privilege of being the new Face of Africa. I will work very hard to represent my country, Senegal, and all the other countries and peoples of Africa to the world."

However, the M-Net and AngloGold event, now perhaps the highlight social event of the year for Africa, is doing more than launch a girl onto a lucrative international modeling career that starts off with a four-year $200,000 contract with the New York modelling agency Ford.

What this means is that within 10 years, by virtue of this quota of M-Net Face of Africa winners, more and more international models performing on the catwalks of London, Milan, New York, and Paris will be Africans. Just the expression, "There goes the Face of Africa", will conjure up images of the mysterious and exotic continent, a status symbol that few other models will be able to quite command.

Of the competition's previous three winners, Patricia Oluchi of Nigeria --- the innaugural M-Net Face of Africa in 1998 --- has appeared in the European editions of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire and Elle magazines, and was the face of GAP Clothing in 1999.

Benvinda Mundenge of Swaziland --- winner in 1999 --- has graced the cover of Women's Wear Daily, among others.

Nombulelo Mazibuko of South Africa --- winner in 2000 ---  has already been featured in two top French fashion magazines, Divas and Madame Figaro.

M-Net is achieving everything a company can hope to achieve, just by this imaginative new idea --- it gets publicity that exceeds its public relations budget; dozens of African girls, many from humble backgrounds, see careers launched, their lives transformed from rags to comfort, and millions of Africans are given a sense of pride in who they are. Then the sales of M-Net can only increase year after year.

On the basis of these multiple achievements, in doing everything right and being truly a corporation for Africa, M-Net has few competitors in deserving the accolade of Africa's Best Company.

2. Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) (South Africa), mobile phone operator. Across much of central and southern Africa, MTN is quickly becoming one of the most recognizable companies. It provides a service so crucial for Africa's economic and social development and yet which would be too expensive to set up through land-based lines, given the crumbled state of many African countries' infrastructure.

In January, MTN won one of the GSM licences in Nigeria. The company will operate in Nigeria through MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, in which MTN holds a 76.8 percent equity stake, and which will provide the GSM 900 and GSM 1800 services.

Says Irene Charnley, the Chairperson of M-Cell, the parent company, which owns 100 percent shares in MTN: "MTN has already invested more than $350 million in its Africa expansion strategy in countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, Swaziland and Cameroon."

When MTN goes live in Nigeria in August, it will discover that within a few weeks, it will have become one of the most recognizable and respected companies in the West African country, so desperate is the demand for efficient communication services in Africa.

MTN South Africa has created one of the world's three largest mobile phone networks, covering 720,000 square kilometres. And even more dramatically, Uganda which had one of the most rundown telephone networks in Africa, has --- through MTN Uganda's border-to-border reach and 140,000 subscribers as of 2001 --- seen Uganda's phone network become the 9th largest in Africa in the space of only two years, starting in October 1998.

MTN plans to spend $1.4 billion in Nigeria over the next 10 years, building an entirely new network, with returns on the initial investment expected within three years. However, it should not come as a surprise to MTN if it starts making a profit much earlier.

Within 10 years, MTN expects the Nigerian telecommunication market to grow to around 10 million users, a larger market that the one in South Africa, currently Africa's leading phone market.

Even though the number of MTN subscribers in Africa outside of South Africa is still very low --- 140,000 in Uganda, 40,000 in Swaziland, 35,000 in Rwanda and 30,000 in Cameroon --- just this increase in teledensity has had a remarkable impact on these countries.

Entire regions and towns that, even in the best of times during the colonial era had no phones or had the most rudimentary services, have been brought into a national, efficient network for the first time ever.

As of June 10, 2001, all the MTN networks in Uganda, Rwanda, and Swaziland had reported positive financial margins, which contributed to the rise in headline earnings per share this year of 47 percent.

3. Grintek (South Africa) , communication systems. Grintek Ltd is an electronics and communications contractor and supplies electronic systems to the telecommunications, mining, defense, avionics, air traffic control, security and power utilities markets in South Africa.

As one of the South African firms increasingly seeking out larger markets, Grintek on June 18 entered a business alliance with the Swedish manufacturing group Saab.

The deal would, as the Business Wire news service reported it, help the two companies "compete on world markets in the hi-tech communications and data network defence sectors."

Saab, in collaboration with BAE SYSTEMS, is to supply 28 Gripen multi-role fighters planes to the South African Air Force, as a replacement to the 120 ageing Mirage and Cheetah fighters used by the South African Air Force.

Bengt Halse, the president of Saab declared that Saab had been "very impressed by Grintek's modern product portfolio."

The Grintek-Saab alliance will immediately create a combined turnover of $40 million, up from US$25-million. 250 specialist jobs for technicians and engineers are to be created immediately, with many more to follow later.

The alliance has already successfully competed for a number of contracts with helicopter manufacturers in Europe and is supplying a range of communications and other
equipment for the use in the Gripen and BAE SYSTEMS Hawk Lead-in Fighter
Trainer.

So far this year, Grintek Electronics Systems (GES) has won the floating trophy as the overall winner and best support contractor for 2000/2001, at the annual Cheetah Air Vehicle Programme Management Review.

Welcoming the new technology links and business prospects offered by the partnership, Grintek chairman, Zoli Kunene, said, "This is an important step in integrating South Africa's best technological skills and capabilities into the global industry. It is a further indication of how the strategic defence procurement programme can secure and expand the role of South Africa's most
modern industries internationally."

Products developed and produced by Avitronics, a Grintek subsidiary, will be installed in the electronic self-protection suite of the upgraded German front-line Tornado aircraft over the next four years.

Said Sybrand Grobbelaar, the head of Grintek: "We have always known that our products were world-class and internationally competitive, but we needed a European partner in good standing to open the sophisticated European defence market for our products, where high technology products out of Africa must still find acceptance."

On June 11, Grintek received a silver award at Telkom's first annual Supplier Awards, awards that honour the Telkom suppliers who have achieved distinction in quality of service and economic empowerment programmmes.

Grintek does one of two things by its outstanding performance. It either reinforces the widely held view that South Africa is a European country which just happened to find itself attached geographically to the southern tip of Africa, or it demonstrates that products of world-class quality can come out of Africa.

4. Debswana Diamond Company (Botswana), Diamond mining. The huge diamond mining company operates in Africa's most successful economy. Botswana has the world's highest per capita foreign reserves, which stand at $ 7 billion. The southwestern African nation also has the highest credit rating in Africa.

However, it has also been cursed with an undesirable world leading status: Botswana has the world's highest HIV and AIDS infection rate, a full 36 percent of the 1.5 million strong population is HIV-positive.

In light of that dire situation, Debswana Diamond Company in May announced that it would start offering full AIDS treatment to its employees, most of whom would have ordinarily been unable to afford the high cost of the new antiretroviral drugs.

Few decisions by a company in Africa could be as welcome to its employees and their families as this offer by Debswana Diamond Company.   

Debswana has shown that it is capable of thinking in terms of the bottom line below the traditional corporate bottom line --- the value of human life taking precedence over profits.

Some might argue that by paying the medical bills of its HIV-positive employees, Debwsana is being mindful of their human resource input, and therefore, its bottom line concern for profit.

The answer is that many companies around the world are incapable of thinking even in this constructive sense of the bottom line.

Debswana gives us a glimpse into the true character of Africa, whereby even though the interplay of free market forces will determine the character of the economy, Africans will still be reluctant to take on the impersonal social life of western societies. They will be successful in business, but never at the expense of society itself.

5. K-Rep (Kenya), micro-finance commercial bank. The managing director of K-Rep Bank, Kimathi Mutua, told the East African Standard newspaper on April 3 that K-Rep lent 450 million Kenyan shillings to entrepreneurs in the small and medium enterprises sector, in 2000.

That money might not seem like much, but it is critical for Kenya's many low-income entrepreneurs, who would largely be overlooked by the larger, main commercial banks.

K-Rep is becoming one of the most talked about business success stories in Africa. It was featured on the CNN programme Inside Africa earlier this year.

The Kenya Rural Enterprise Programme (K-Rep), was established in 1984, and has become one of the most successful micro-finance schemes ever undertaken in Africa. It provides financial services to small enterprises, and has helped bring dozens of these small businesses into the Kenyan fiscal economy. Kenya is the largest economy in East Africa, as well as the Horn of Africa.

In 1998, K-Rep made 11,582 loans totaling 347 million Kenya shillings (about US $5.9 million).

And as has been the experience of many micro-finance projects in East Africa, the small businesses actually honour their obligations better than the larger, well-known businesses that the main commercial banks prefer to lend money.

The loan repayment by K-Rep's clients is high, with the defaulting rate at less than five per cent.

"These people lack access to credit yet experience has shown they are capable of servicing loans provided they [are] appropriately advanced" said Mutua told the East African Standard.

The bank, which is based at Riruta in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, began business in January 2000.

K-Rep changed its name to K-Rep Holdings Limited, created K-Rep Bank, and separated its commercial banking operations from its research and advisory services. Thus, K-Rep successfully transformed itself from a charity Non-governmental Organization into a fully-fledged commercial institution.

The one lesson that K-Rep presents is this: it introduces a new element into what the strategy of banking should be in Africa, where disposable incomes remain very low, where most mainstream commercial banks are reluctant to lend money to low-income borrowers. Yet where, in light of the indebtedness of government to international financial bodies, small-scale entrepreneurs are more likely than governments or large corporations to re-pay their loans.

Since the African family and clan units have a greater supervisory role in ordinary people's lives than agencies like the police, micro-credit and finance is actually performing better than the main commercial lending.

6. Regimanuel Gray (Ghana), real estate developer. Regimanuel Gray Limited, received two international awards in 2001 in Paris and Brussele for its outstanding achievements in the construction industry in Ghana.

The Trade Leaders Club offered the first award at the 13th International Construction Award while the second, the Euromarket award, honoured the 10 year-old company for delivering reasonably-priced yet high quality houses to a wide range of income groups in Ghana, where the West African country had experienced an acute shortage of housing for the growing urban population.

Emmanuel Botchwey, the chief executive of Regimanuel Gray said in the Ghanaian capital Accra that his company would continue with "our determination to overcome the well-known problems that face the real estate industry" and to give "even greater impetus" to the process of providing affordable and quality housing to Ghana's work force.

Since 1991, Regimanuel Gray has constructed 1,500 houses and has laid out plans to build a community of 400 homes in the Dome area in northern Accra, and the development of a 1,300 acre project site near Adenta for a middle income housing estate.

The company is also in talks with the Tema Development Corporation to acquire a site to provide industrial estates, as well as the development of a retail centre at Communities 15, 18, and East Airport in Accra.

Botchwey said Ghana needs new 70,000 houses annually and that Regimanuel Gray would work with other real estate companies to complement the government's efforts to deal with the housing shortage in Ghana.

7. ISP KENYA (Kenya), Internet Service Provider. By Trupti Shah.
ISP Kenya in 2001 introduced the Family- Friendly Services, ISP Family-net, a service which enables parents filter out such offensive web sites as pornography and drugs, and ISP Filter-net, which controls the mumber of web sites that employees can view while on the job.

In the more conservative societies such as Kenya and most other African countries, the question of offensive material on the Internet is becoming a major concern.

ISP Kenya's service can filter over 18 million sites safely to suit specific needs of families, companies or schools.

The introduction of the service will enable corporations to customise filtering by choosing from 32 comprehensive content categories that meet the needs of its specific Internet use policy.

"This means the temptation for employees to use the Internet for non-work related activities can cost companies millions of shillings in wasted bandwidth and decreased employee productivity, beside the possibility for a lawsuit that can be invited by illegal or inappropriate Internet use by an employee," the company's managing director, Yazim Nanji, told Africa Almanac.

Among ISP Kenya's other services are Points of Presence (POPS), located in the centre of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the city's Industrial Area, Jamhuri, Parklands and Westlands areas, Building-net, Hospital-net, Hotel-net and Campus-net. The company was voted the Best Internet Service Provider in Kenya for 2000/2001 by the Computer Society of Kenya.

Kenya is the largest economy in East Africa, as well as the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa. ISP Kenya began its service in December 1999.

ISP Kenya, has undertaken a non-profit project of supporting Kenyan artists at the Nairobi Museum by sponsoring and setting up an e-commerce website that will promote the Kenyan artists and their art.

8. South African Breweries (South Africa), beer brewing. The world's fourth largest brewery South African Breweries continued its dominance of the African market in 2001, and spread further afield, this time into China. SAB is best known for its brand called Castle.

London's Financial Times newspaper reported on May 21 that SAB, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, was poised to enter two or three more provinces in China. The South African company already owns a 49 percent stake in a Chinese joint venture called CRE Beverage, which ownes 11 breweries. 

SAB, faced with the weakness of the South African currency, the Rand, against the U.S dollar, is trying to spread its reach and reduce its dependence on the South African market as its primary source of revenue.

In June, South African Breweries was mentioned by market analysts as standing a good chance of buying the Bass Brewers from another company, Interbrew. The other leading contender to buy Bass Brewers, is the Dutch brewer Heineken.

Interbrew acquired Bass Brewers in 2000 for $3.2 billion, but British competition officials opposed the buyout, saying with it giving Interbrew a 32 percent share of the British beer market, it would stifle the market and deprive the public of choice.

9. Dimension Data (South Africa), information technology. To put the impact of Dimension Data into perspective, the Information technology consulting firm IDC announced on June 7 the world's top 10 leading IT service companies, ranked according to revenues in 2000.

Among the companies mentioned in this survey was the South African IT firm Dimension Data. 2000 was the year in which the over-rated "New Economy" Internet companies. But the collapse en masse of the "dot com" companies did not hamper the progress of Dimension Data, South Africa's largest information technology company.

After several months of talks, Dimension Data was, on June 8, granted the approval of U.S. antitrust administrators for its planned $376 million acquisition of the American Internet consultancy firm Proxicom Inc.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission granted early termination of the waiting period for the acquisition under American antitrust regulations. Germany's Federal Cartel Office --- the equivalent of the U.S Federal Trade Commission --- gave its approval to Dimension Data on June 7, to go ahead with the acquisition of Proxicom.

Dimension Data is excelling in an area --- information technology --- that does not tap into a country's geographical advantages. South Africa's natural endowment of minerals, for example. It is a purely intellectual company, and that is what makes it inspiring from an African point of view.

10. Pick'n Pay (South Africa), supermarket chain. Pick 'n Pay was one of several South African companies which in 2001 was reaching, not just beyond borders, but beyond the continent. It had been in talks for several months on the takeover of a number of stores owned by the Franklins Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based group, Dairy Farm International.

Finally, the deal was announced on June 18. Dairy Farm announced that it had signed, through Franklins, a deal to sell 53 stores to Pick'n Pay for US$52 million.

Pick'n Pay is to buy the 53 stores (which as of December 2000 were valued at about $19 million) and Franklins' brand and trading names, together with the No Frills product brand in Australia, as well as acquiring associated stock and a number of liabilities.

The company said in a statement the deal was subjected to certain conditions
including foreign investment protocols.

It sends a positive signal around Africa to see companies based on the continent with the vision and muscle to "pick n' buy" up foreign-owned businesses, especially from such developed markets as the United States and Australia.

11. Anglovaal Mining Limited (AVMIN) (South Africa) , platinum mining. Avmin announced in Johannesburg on March 1 that its earnings had gone up 92 precent for the six months ending December 31, 2000.

The dramatic increase in earnings was attributed to a strong performance by Avmin's ferrous metals division and the Nkomati mine, along with a weak South African rand, which in 2000 fell to new lows against the U.S dollar.

The pre-tax profit from the Nkomati mine alone rose 198 percent to Rand 137 million during the period.

On February 1, the company announced that it had acquired a 13.7 percent stake in Iscor Limited and created an alliance with Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa Limited (IDC).

"The Board of Avmin believes that, at current levels, Iscor's share price does not reflect that company's full potential value, making it an attractive investment opportunity with substantial turnaround possibilities," a statement from the company read.

Then on May 30 came an announcement of another acquisition. Avmin and another company Impala Platinum Holdings (Implats) said they had made a joint acquisition of the platinum group metals rights, together with the associated surface rights, on the farm Dwars Rivier in South Africa's Mpumalanga province.

The rights, to both the UG 2 and Merensky reefs, were acquired from the Associated Manganese Mines of South Africa Limited (Assmang) after a competitive bidding process.

The acquisition --- through a new joint venture called Two Rivers Platinum ---  will see Avmin and Implats develop a new mine with an annual run-of-mine output of about 1.4 million tons, producing between 160 000 and 170 000 ounces of platinum a year, for about 20 years.

12. Energy Africa (South Africa), oil exploration. The oil exploration and production company Energy Africa Limited reported what it called an "exceptional set of results" for the first quarter of 2001 at the end of March.

The company, which on June 4 reported a second significant oil discovery in Block G offshore from the West African nation of Equatorial Guinea, saw average production go up 18 percent to 17,700 barrels per day during the first quarter.

It already has an interest in the Ceiba field also in Equatorial Guinea.

Energy Africa might be in for a prosperous time in the country. According to a CNN news report in June, Equatorial Guinea, at 15 precent per year, now has the world's fastest growing economy, most likely from the sudden discovery and exploration of oil.

Like Chad, the discovery of oil in Equatorial Guinea is set to transform one of the world's poorest countries into a major oil exporter, with all the implications of that.

Other figures from Energy Africa's first quarter include: a 12 percent increase in operating costs, while commercial reserves went up by 30 percent to 47 million barrels.

On March 4, Energy Africa announced that it had signed an agreement to obtain three more exploration permits offshore Morocco.

Through its subsidiary Energy Africa Morocco, and in a joint venturer with Taurus Oil AB of Sweden, Energy Africa will eplore for oil in the Tiznit Offshore Area, a 6000 square kilometre area offshore the Atlantic coast of Morocco.

In Gabon, another major African oil producer, Energy Africa saw its output at the Tchatamba complex contribute about 3,600 barrels per day of Energy Africa's net production.

13. Ashanti Goldfields Company (Ghana), gold mining. "To build an African gold mining and exploration company to international standards of excellence, managed predominantly by Africans."

That is the mission statement of the Ghanaian mining company Ashanti Goldfields Company. Whatever the validity of the goal, Ashanti gold certainly stands out among the African-run companies.

In the first quarter of 2001, the company reduced its gross debt by US$13 million from the end of 2000; its group earnings were recorded at US$9.0 million, up 30 percent on the first quarter of 2000.

Ashanti Goldfields Company has mining operations in Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Guinea.

The Geita mine in Tanzania was officially commissioned in August 2000, and has so far shown a better than expected performance. Tanzania is estimated to be heading to the status of Africa's fourth largest gold producer, after South Africa, Ghana, and Mali.

14. Kenya Airways (Kenya), airline. Kenya Airways, already one of Africa's most successful airlines, continued to jet forward in 2001. It entered a strategic alliance with Air Botswana in April and has as its main partner the Royal Dutch airline KLM.

On June 5, Kenya Airways announced that it is to invest about 1.04 billion U.S. dollars in the improvement of its fleet and customer service.

The airline's new managing director Brian Presbury said in the Kenyan capital Nairobi that about 70.5 million dollars would go toward renewing the aircraft fleet, upgrading the technology and ground handling capacity.

Kenya Airways is also in talks with at least five African airlines to form strategic partnerships. Kenya Airways, which is one of the largest airlines in Africa, has a fleet of 15 aircraft, mainly Boeings and Airbuses. It expects three new Boeing 767-300 planes to be delivered by the end of the year.

Perhaps the most important new service introduced by the airlline in 2001, was the provision of visa forms for tourists and business travellers on its web site. Before then, it had become an inconvenience to visitors to Kenya to have to get the forms at Kenya's embassies and High Commissions worldwide.

The placing of the visa forms on the Kenya Airways web site is sure to increase the number of tourists visiting Kenya, a country which is already one of the leading tourist destinations in Africa.

In June, the Sunday Nation newspaper quoted the secretary-general of the Kenya Airline Pilots Association, Gakweli Warrakah, as saying Kenya was faced with an acute shortage of pilots owing to the increasing number of flights in the country.

15. Eskom Enterprises (South Africa), telecommunications. Eskom Enterprises, through its telecommunications branch Esi-Tel, announced on May 29 that it plans to construct a fibre-optic cable all the way from South Africa to Europe, without the use of submarine cables.

"We can connect up to West Africa through existing high-voltage wires," the executive manager of Eskom, Ronald Coney said at an Information Technology conference in Johannesburg.

The fibre-optic cable will enable countries linked to it to transmit large voulmes of data at high speed, thus adding another valuable to Africa's telecommunications needs.

Eskom says it has developed a technique by which to string fiber-optic cable to high-voltage electric cables using a helicopter, Kevlar-reinforced tape and a petrol-driven wire-running machine.

The same technique is being used to rollout a 14,000-kilometre backbone network in South Africa.

The technique of using a helicopter in the process has increased the distance covered from just over 4 km a day, to to about 20 km per day.

"There really is no smart engineering involved, just human skill," Coney said of the helicopter pilots trained in precision flying for the repair of electric cables. Three teams with helicopters will be used for the 14,000-km South African rollout. Eskom says it has over 250,000 km of power cables suitable for the optic rollout.

16. Vodacom (South Africa), mobile phone operator. The South African telecommunications holding company VenFin on June 21 recorded a 7.4 percent rise in its annual headline earnings per share.

The headline earnings per share increased to 112.3 cents in the year leading to the end of March from 104.6 cents in 2000.

Much of this better-than-expected performance came from the mobile phone group Vodacom, in which VenFin holds a 13.5 percent stake.

"Vodacom performed very well with a 37.4 percent increase in headline earnings," to $223 million, VenFin said in a statement.

Vodacom, South Africa's biggest mobile phone operator, is half-owned by the state-controlled phone utility Telkom, while Britain's Vodafone owns about one third.

17. Ostrich Automotive Components (South Africa) , car upholstery. This South African company came up in 2001 with a novel idea, to take advantage of the foot-and-mouth animal disease crisis in Britain during the first half of 2001. British cattle, which provided much of the leather for car seats in Europe, was being slaughtered by the hundreds.

In this crisis, Ostrich Automotive Components, which is now making car upholstery from the hide of the Ostrich bird.

If Ostrich Automotive have their way, they will soon be flapping their wings into new markets, with Ostrich hide becoming the next fashion statement, in the way crocodile hide became a favourite in the fashion industry in the 1970s.

The market for Ostrich hide is growing in South Africa and is set to expand abroad, particularly in the North American market. Just by cleverly coming up with an alternative to cattle hide during a crisis in Britain, Ostrich Automotive Components has opened a whole new source of revenue for ostrich farmers in Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia.

18. EFG-Hermes (Egypt), financial group. EFG-Hermes announced on June 14 that it was in merger talks with another Egyptian financial services firm, Commercial International Investment Company (CIIC).

Financial analysts, who already rate EFG-Hermes highly, welcomed the proposed strategic alliance, pointing out that EFG-Hermes, which is Egypt's largest financial services company --- outside the banks --- stood a better chance of expanding its services overseas, especially to the Middle East. At present, EFG-Hermes is 20 percent owned by the American firm Citigroup and 35 percent owned by its employees.

"EFG-Hermes is the largest financial institution in Egypt, apart from banks, and [the alliance] would give it another push forward. This expansion will help them penetrate the Arab world and become [a greater] regional player," Amr al-Alfy, a banking analyst at CIBC, told Reuters news agency on June 14.

19. Trans Hex Group (South Africa), diamond mining. Only a few years ago, Trans Hex was an obscure mining company as part of the Rembrandt conglomerate, overshadowed by the world-reknown De Beers.

Then in 1999, Trans Hex's chief executive Neil Hoogenhout set out a plan to increase the company's diamond output 10 times to more than 1 million carats by 2002, an increase in sales of $250 million in 2002.

Since then and in recent months, Trans Hex has gone on to become a major player in the world diamond market. The company bought out Benco, a financially troubled marine diamond miner and took over Benco's deep water marine concessions off the coast of Namibia.

The takeover of Benco gave Trans Hex control of Mvelaphanda Diamonds, a company owned by the influential and politically connected black entrepreneur Tokyo Sexwale.

On June 7, 2001, Diamond Fields International Ltd, a company that had entered into a joint venture with Trans Hex, announced that its diamond recovery had exceeded expectations during the first nine days of the commissioning phase of the marine diamond mining vessel mv Ivan Prinsep at the Marshall Fork feature, offshore Luderitz, in Namibia.

The commissioning phase began on May 24 and was to have been completed by the end of June.

20. New Clicks (South Africa) , cosmetics and health care retailer. It was announced in Johannesburg on June 25 that the South African retail company New Clicks Holdings Ltd is to open up to 30 stores over the next three years, following a $1.24 million franchise agreement with the British cosmetics company The Body Shop. The Body Shop was founded by Anita Roddick in 1976.

In a statement, New Clicks said the brand will be launched in October, with five stores expected to be open by December.

Clicks is South Africa's leading upscale specialist retailer of home and beauty products, with operations in over 222 outlets, including eight franchised stores, in the southern Africa region.

It reported a 14.3 percent increase in 2001 interim diluted headline earnings per share to 32.7 cents in the six months leading to February 28, 2001. 

It was the first South African mass retail company to successfully establish a non-credit customer loyalty card.

It said it will enter into a strategic partnership with COSi, a South African company that operates The Body Shop's outsourced manufacturing facility in Britain, with COSi taking up a 25 percent stake in The Body Shop branch in South Africa.

copyright 2004 Africa Almanac

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