The new bureau at Maputo is the seventh CNBC office on the continent. Other CNBC offices are in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi, Lagos, Abuja, Windhoek, Libreville and Lusaka.
CNBC Africa is an affiliate of CNBC International owned by Africa Business News (ABN). Its country bureau representative will be Sunnyboy Mshengu.
Although the link between Maputo and CNBC Africa’s Sandton (Johannesburg) studios is currently being tested; it is expected that by June 25, the coverage testing should have been finalized for coverage of Mozambique’s National Independence Day.
The conglomerate also plans to open offices in over twenty African countries by the end of 2014.
According to Roberta Naidoo, Managing Director of the ABN Group; establishing a CNBC Africa presence in Mozambique represents an important milestone in the channel’s continental expansion strategy.
“While we have significantly increased our coverage of African business and finance news over the past five years, our expansion strategy is accelerating significantly in order for us to attain our target of a presence in twenty African territories by the end of 2014. Clearly, in terms of which countries to target first, we have to focus on the continent’s economic hotspots – and Mozambique is certainly one of the hottest. I’m consequently very excited about the advent of our Maputo bureau, which will provide our audience with even better, more in-depth and more relevant business news coverage,” Naidoo says.
The establishment of an office in Mozambique came after the performance appraisal from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which recorded that Mozambique has grown tremendously over the years. The monetary agency expects the country to experience a rapid growth of 6.7% and 7.2% in 2012 and 2013 respectively – a far cry from growth prospects in the developed world, particularly Europe.
It believes that future growth will be anchored on prudent macroeconomic management, low inflationary environment, exports, and robust Foreign Direct Investment inflows.
ABN Group’s Vice President for business development, Sid Wahi, says it makes perfect sense for CNBC Africa to establish a permanent presence in Mozambique.
“Since 2001, Mozambique has been one of the world’s top 10 countries for annual average GDP growth. This is a country that has overcome a decades-long civil war and tackled massive socio-economic challenges, to become one of the most exciting economies globally,” Wahi affirms.
“It is therefore quite clear that in order for CNBC Africa to fulfill its mandate as the continent’s leading source of accurate, reliable and actionable business and finance information; it must have its finger firmly on the pulse of the Mozambican economy.”
CNBC Africa is a pan-African financial and business channel established on the 1st of June 2007 by media conglomerate ABN 360. It is reportedly the first and only real-time Africa financial and Business news network. The channel covers business and financial markets news from three regions across the continent, and can be described as a forum where the news of Africa’s business world is announced and debated while presenting a view of the continent.
On June 1, 2012; it will celebrate its 5th year anniversary of continental business broadcasting across Africa.
Co-founder and Chairman of CNBC Africa, Zafar Siddiqi, says; Africa’s business and economic leaders have the opportunity to change the economic landscape and perceptions about the continent, which will pay dividends for generations to come. But to do so most effectively, they need access to reliable, relevant information as it happens.
“For the past five years, CNBC Africa has given them exactly that – and we look forward to continuing to providing them with this critical news service for a very long time to come.”
In a recent interview with Business Daily, CNBC Africa co-founder and Vice-chairman Rakesh Wahi, said the company priority is to create Africa’s largest media conglomerate for business and economic news.
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