NIGERIA
Power utility’s assets sold off
Nigeria formally scrapped its inefficient and graft-ridden electricity firm on Friday and handed its assets to private investors in a bid expected to improve power supplies in Africa’s most populous nation. The investors who have become beneficiaries of the nation’s privatisation drive include Seoul-based Korea Electric Power Corporation, as well as local investors. “The PHCN [Power Holding Company of Nigeria] has essentially ceased to exist,” Power Minister Chinedu Nebo said at a brief ceremony while handing over the Abuja Distribution Company to its new owner. “We now have distribution, generation and transmission companies. So, it is no longer PHCN,” Nebo said. The privatisation of PHCN has long been in the works in Africa’s second-largest economy, where blackouts occur multiple times daily despite the country’s status as the continent’s largest oil producer. – Sapa-AFP
ZAMBIA
Automation to cut mine jobs
The Zambian arm of mining company Vedanta Resources planned to cut at least 1 529 jobs by March next year, the chief executive of the unit said on Friday, as the firm automated its mines in Africa’s top copper producer. “The resultant changes may affect upwards of 1 529 members of our staff,” Kishore Kumar, the chief executive of Konkola Copper Mines, said. A spokesman for the company confirmed the job cuts would be made by March. Kumar said that Konkola’s annual output of 8 tons per employee was “unsustainable” when compared to the global average of 100 tons. Moving to mechanisation and automation for all of its operations would increase productivity, he added. – Reuters