Business

About 4,000 government employees in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state have been sacked, sparking outrage among trade unions. The state government said the workers, mainly in administrative posts, were unproductive, and were dismissed to reduce the "bloated bureaucracy" and the wage bill.

Tullow Oil plc has announced that it has completed the refinancing of US$2.5 billion of Reserves Based Lending (“RBL”) credit facilities.The US$2.5 billion of credit facilities are split between a commercial bank facility of US$2.4 billion and an IFC facility of US$100 million. The fully committed facilities are revolving with a three-year grace period and final maturity of November 2024.

Apple has said it is working to fix a serious bug within its Mac operating system. The flaw in MacOS High Sierra - the most recent version - makes it possible to gain entry to the machine without a password, and also have access to powerful administrator rights.

The President of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has launched the Presidential Youth Advisory Group (PYAG) to provide insights and innovative solutions for job creation for Africa’s youth, as outlined in the Bank’s Job's for Youth in Africa Strategy.The Jobs for Youth in Africa initiative aims at creating 25 million jobs and impacting 50 million youth over the next ten years by equipping them with the right skills to get decent and meaningful jobs. It is currently the largest effort going on for youth employment in Africa today

Human rights group, Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the activities of Shell, the oil company for alleged crimes committed by Nigeria’s military in the 1990s.

African countries have since 2006 paid in excess of $ 2 billion on premiums on Eurobonds they have issued.

Japan's Softbank has reportedly made a heavily discounted bid to buy Uber shares at a valuation of $48bn (£36bn).

US magazine publisher Time Inc. will be bought by rival media company Meredith Corporation for $2.8bn (£2.1bn).

The newly sworn in President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa is courting the international investor community to help his country.

The African Development Bank Group’s Board of Directors has approved a loan of €180 million to the Republic of Cameroon to finance the first phase of the government’s Competitiveness and Economic Growth Support Programme (PACCE).PACCE is the first of a three-year programmatic general budget support operations to be implemented from 2017 to 2019 in order to shore up public finances in the wake of dwindling oil prices exasperated by security and related humanitarian challenges within the country and across the CEMAC region.