The following company announcements, scheduled economic indicators, debt and currency market moves and political events may affect African markets on Thursday.
GLOBAL MARKETS
Asian shares slid on Thursday while the safe-haven dollar rallied as a sudden sell-off on Wall Street and delays with coronavirus vaccines served as an excuse to book profits on recent hefty gains. MKTS/GLOB
WORLD OIL PRICES
Oil prices slid in early trade on Thursday on fresh worries about weakened fuel demand, after England clamped down on travel and China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, also sought to limit Lunar New Year trips to stem a surge in COVID-19 cases.
SOUTH AFRICA MARKETS
South Africa's rand weakened on Wednesday, with caution ahead of the outcome of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting for market cues and indications of rate cuts by the European Central Bank (ECB) curbing risk-taking by investors.
MARKETS
The Kenyan shilling KES= was little changed on Wednesday, but was forecast to weaken due to dollar demand from companies covering their end-month expenses, traders said.
RATES
Kenya's central bank held its benchmark lending rate KECBIR=ECI at 7.0% on Wednesday, the bank's monetary policy committee said, and said that measures it had put in place since March have helped mitigate COVID-19's effect on the economy.
ECONOMY
Kenya's economy contracted 1.1% on year in the third quarter of 2020 compared with growth of 5.8% in the same period in 2019, the statistics office said on Thursday.
CORONAVIRUS
Uganda is conducting clinical trials of a domestically developed drug to cure COVID-19 infections after nearly a year of research by Ugandan scientists, the government said on Wednesday.
COAST COCOA
Ivory Coast exported 450,369 tonnes of raw cocoa beans from the start of the growing season in October to the end of December, down 10% from a year earlier, provisional port data showed on Wednesday.
POLITICS
Lawmakers in Democratic Republic of Congo voted on Wednesday to oust Prime Minister Sylvestre Ilunga Ilunkamba, collapsing the government and handing President Felix Tshisekedi a chance to appoint loyalists to key ministries.
CORONAVIRUS
President John Magufuli said on Wednesday that Tanzania did not need a coronavirus lockdown because God would protect his people and homespun precautions such as steam inhalation were better than dangerous foreign vaccines.
CONFLICT
Four former U.S. ambassadors to Ethiopia wrote a joint letter to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed voicing concern over the conflict in the northern Tigray region, rising ethnic tension in the country and the reported presence of Eritrean troops.
WILDLIFE
Some 750 pelicans have been found dead in a UNESCO World Heritage site in northern Senegal that provides refuge for millions of migratory birds, the country's parks director said.
POLITICS
France said on Wednesday it wanted Guinea to shed light on a spate of arrests targeting opposition figures in the country and warned that without answers the European Union could impose measures on Africa's top bauxite producer.
DEBT
Heavily indebted African oil producer Chad has officially requested debt restructuring, the first country to do so under a new common framework agreed by Group of 20 major economies last year, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.