NAIROBI (Reuters) – The Kenyan shilling weakened slightly against the dollar on Tuesday as corporations sought dollars to balance their books ahead of year-end, traders said.

At 0836 GMT, a commercial bank quoted the shilling at 102.25/45 to the dollar, slightly weaker than Monday’s close of 102.15/35.

(Reporting by Katharine Houreld)

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ABUJA (Reuters) – A West African bloc called on Nigeria and other countries to undergo “necessary structural reforms” to improve their economies, as a collapse in oil and commodity prices continues to cripple economic growth.

Nigeria and other member countries should “take appropriate economic and financial stimulus measures in order to be less vulnerable to commodity price fluctuations and improve their economies’ resilience to exogenous shocks,” said the Economic Community of West African States, meeting in the Nigerian capital on Saturday.

Nigeria, which depends on oil for roughly 70 percent of government revenues, entered its first recession in a quarter of a century this year, as crude prices slumped.

(Reporting by Paul Carsten and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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ACCRA (Reuters) – The World Bank Group said on Thursday it two of its units would provide another $517 million to Ghana in debt and guarantees to support the $7.7 billion Sankofa oil and gas project developed by Italy’s ENI SpA and upstream trader Vitol Ghana.

The financing adds to a $700 million World Bank guarantee package announced in July and brings the institution’s total financing to around $1.217 billion for the offshore project, whose gas component is set to open in 2018, a statement said.

The bank’s commercial lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has committed a loan of $235 million to Vitol Ghana and is arranging another $65 million in debt.

Guarantees by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, another bank institution, will support Vitol Ghana’s commercial borrowing needs for the project and will be issued for up to 15 years. The new pledges bring the World Bank Group’s financing share of the Sankofa project to about 16 percent.

“Sankofa is expected to generate $2.3 billion in revenues for Ghana’s government per year and provide a stable, long-term source of domestic gas that will solve Ghana’s chronic gas supply constraints,” an IFC statement said.

ENI holds a 44.4 percent stake in Sankofa, Vitol holds 35.6 percent and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation holds a combined carried and participating interest of 20 percent.

Ghana first began pumping oil in 2010 at the offshore Jubilee field operated by Tullow Oil Plc, a British company that this August opened a second field called TEN.

Sankofa is expected to generate about 1,000 megawatts of power for Ghana and, combined with gas from two other new fields, could eliminate the need for Ghana to import gas from Nigeria through the West African Gas Pipeline Co.

(Additional reporting by David Lawder; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by James Dalgleish and Jonathan Oatis)

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By Tiemoko Diallo

BAMAKO (Reuters) – The amount of gold dug up by people working informally in Mali could soon rival official production thanks to demand from domestic refineries, officials in the West African nation say.

The informal sector’s sudden growth, defying opposition from major commercial operators, is a major boost to an economy suffering from years of political instability. Mali’s government derives about a quarter of its revenues from gold.

It is Africa’s third-largest gold miner behind South Africa and Ghana, and artisanal mines contributed a third of the 70.2 tonnes of gold it exported in 2015.

Informal sector growth accelerated in 2012, when Islamists hijacked a separatist Tuareg rebellion in the desert north, throwing the country into chaos.

As the economy flagged under sanctions from its neighbours, farmers and others began digging for gold.

The Chamber of Mines now estimates that more than a million artisanal miners work at about 350 sites, producing between 10 and 15 tonnes of gold a year.

Government export statistics put output from artisanal mines at 23.7 tonnes in 2015. Since not all gold is declared, the real production figure could be higher.

“We think that if we organise it, (artisanal mining) could produce as much gold as the big industrial companies,” said the president of the Chamber of Mines, Abdoulaye Pona.

Mali’s largest gold refinery, Kankou Moussa, owned by Swiss Bullion Co., can produce 100 kg per day and sources most of its gold from an artisanal mining site in the southwest.

“Our principal target is artisanal miners, notably those organised in cooperatives, as well as small and medium-sized mines,” said director of operations Carlos Novo. By his calculations, artisanal miners in Mali might currently produce 36 tonnes of gold a year.

But Mali’s artisanal boom faces opposition from industrial operators. Mark Bristow, the CEO of Randgold Resources, which owns three major mines in Mali, has warned that the activity could drive companies to leave.

“They (artisanal miners) illegally occupy sites within companies’ permits…they use mechanised means, there are even small industries that produce gold without declaring anything,” Bristow told a news conference in the capital Bamako earlier this year.

The largely unregulated sector is plagued by fatal accidents, smuggling, child labour and environmental damage. The government announced plans in 2014 to supervise operations and give miners easier access to financing, but progress has been slow.

Australia’s Resolute Mining Ltd and Endeavour Mining also have operations in Mali.

(Writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Aaron Ross/Ruth Pitchford)

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