🇰🇿 Central Asia — Kazakhstan finds an Indian Ocean option: Oman’s first state visit brings a joint fund and a new bank shareholder
Sultan Haitham bin Tarik’s first state visit to Astana, on 5–6 October, produced five agreements and ten memoranda: investment protection, an air services deal, a joint fund between the two sovereign investors — and a proposal to route Kazakh trade through Omani ports.
🇬🇭 West Africa — Ghana’s cabinet votes to apply for BRICS, and insists it is adding partners, not swapping them
Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa announced the decision in Accra on 6 October with India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar beside him: a formal application, Indian help with the process, and a promise that the old partnerships stay.
🇵🇦 Latin America — Panama pitches the Canal to Vietnam’s factories: nine agreements in Hanoi and an embassy reopening in 2027
President José Raúl Mulino spent 5–8 October in Vietnam selling one idea — that Vietnam’s export industry should reach the Americas through Panama — and came away with nine agreements and a Vietnamese embassy on the way.
🇰🇿 Central Asia — Kazakhstan borrows in renminbi at A-rated prices, eight basis points inside its own debut
The second sovereign panda bond in fifteen weeks priced at 1.82% on the three-year tranche, eight basis points tighter than May’s debut and roughly double the size, two weeks after S&P delivered its first Kazakhstan upgrade since 2016.
🇬🇾 Caribbean — Guyana grew 33.3% in six months. The number that matters is 10.1%
President Irfaan Ali presented the 2026 Mid-Year Report on 14 September: half-year growth of 33.3%, petroleum receipts revised to roughly $6.5 billion — 136.8% above budget — and a non-oil economy expanding at 10.1%, which is the only…
🇦🇴 Southern Africa — Angola books $10bn from TotalEnergies in the same week its non-oil corridor doubles its target
Patrick Pouyanné pledged $10 billion over five years in Luanda on 9 September. Two days later the Lobito railway said it would double minerals cargo in 2027, and Washington lent Africell $99.6 million to keep Huawei out of…
🇵🇰 South Asia — Pakistan climbs out of distress: Moody’s lifts the sovereign to B3 as reserves rebuild
Three years after standing at the edge of default, Pakistan was upgraded from Caa1 to B3 with a stable outlook on 24 August — and it arrives with the receipts: a Eurobond in April, a debut panda bond…
🇬🇭 West Africa — Ghana is invited back to the Eurobond market and says no: “we are not in a hurry”
Debt-to-GDP at 45%, statutory targets hit ahead of schedule, distress risk cut from high to moderate — and a finance minister who has decided that regaining market access is not the same as using it.
🇪🇬 North Africa — The Suez zone books $7bn: Egypt stops selling the canal and starts selling its hinterland
The Suez Canal Economic Zone drew $7 billion across 117 projects in the year to 30 June, with its own revenues up 37% — evidence that Egypt’s most valuable waterway asset may turn out to be the land…
🇨🇮🇳🇬 West Africa — The Abidjan–Lagos highway breaks ground: $15.6bn to weld five economies into one corridor
A 1,028-kilometre coastal expressway linking Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria finally moves from blueprint to construction in 2026 — ECOWAS’s biggest bet that integration, not borders, drives West African growth. After years of feasibility studies, the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Highway is set to begin construction in 2026, with completion targeted for 2030. The 1,028-kilometre […]
🇰🇿 Central Asia — Kazakhstan cashes in on the Middle Corridor: a $10bn rail bet and an IPO to match
Trans-Caspian freight has climbed nearly sixfold since 2020, and Astana is now preparing to float its national railway to fund $10 billion of track, ports and ships — turning the route that bypasses Russia into a listed asset. The Middle Corridor — formally the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) — runs from China through Central […]
🇸🇦 Gulf — NEOM’s great reset: Saudi Arabia trades a desert utopia for data centres and a Red Sea port
With The Line frozen until after 2030 and roughly $16 billion budgeted just to exit its own contracts, Riyadh is quietly rebuilding NEOM around Oxagon’s data centres and a container port designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. For nearly a decade, NEOM was Saudi Arabia’s most extravagant promise: a $500 billion futuristic region anchored […]