Breaking News Today – Wednesday 13 August 2025

Business & Tech News 

Asian Markets Track Higher

The markets in Asia this morning were boosted by major tech stocks such as Tencent that surged by 16% this morning after releasing their Q2 results that beat analyst estimates. Nett profit was up by 18% year-on-year with Tencent’s music division providing impetus with a 26% growth in revenue. This pushed the Shanghai index into green territory. Meanwhile the Nikkei 225 index hit a new high with majors such as Yokohama Rubber surging by 10%, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings jumped 5.26%.and Renesas Electronics, which rose over 7%. The Hang Seng Index rose by over 1% with most other index’s opening in positive territory this morning. This followed an announcement by the US administration to extend the deadline for the implementation of trade tariffs for China by an additional 90 day period.

South African Unemployment Expands in Q2

Unemployment in South Africa remains a growing challenge with South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for Q2 2025 indicating that the official unemployment rate for the second quarter came in at 33,2%, up 0.3% from Q1. The period saw an increase of 140 000 in the number of unemployed persons to 8,4 million people. Discouraged work-seekers decreased by 28 000 (down by 0,8%), and the number of persons who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement remained unchanged. This led to a decrease of 28 000 in the number of the non economically active population to 16,6 million. despite promises of creating millions of new jobs by South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa. The South African economy barely grew in Q 1 of 2025, with a GDP growth of only 0,1%.

Mining Index Indicates Poor Policy for Miners in Sub Saharan Africa

The Fraser Index is a research study conducted annually by the Fraser Institute, researching the viability of mining destinations for mining companies since 1997. The results make it possible to assess how mineral endowment and public policy factors, such as taxation and regulation, affect trends in exploration investment around the world. An overall Investment Attractiveness Index is constructed by combining the Mineral Potential Index, which rates regions on the basis of geological attractiveness, and the Policy Potential Index. in the latest 2025 report, South Africa scored 19.47 on the index compared to 40.59 in 2023.

This resulted in a ranking of 64th out of 86 countries included in the index – the lowest ranking in four years. sadly for the Southern African region, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Mali, and Mozambique all managed to hit a ranking below South Africa on the rankings. Namibia, was however the bright spot for the region with a score of 78.96. Morocco wast the top ranked mining friendly destination for mining companies in Africa coming in 18th with Namibia ranked in the 20th spot.

Perplexity Flexes Its Tech Reach

A  Reuters report, indicates that AI search engine Perplexity has offered to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion cash in an unsolicited offer. The terms of the offer include a commitment to keep Chrome’s underlying engine, Chromium, open source and continue to invest in it. Perplexity’s offer also includes a promise to invest $3 billion into the open source project. as well as no to changes to the user defaults of Chrome users, including the default search engine. That is, Perplexity is promising to leave Google as the search engine rather than making its own AI-powered option the default. Perplexity did not divulge how it would fund the offer. The AI newcomer – only three-year-old now, has raised around $1 billion in funding so far from investors that include Nvidia and Japan’s SoftBank. It was last valued at around $14 billion.

Business, Tech & Market News Shorts: 

• The inflation rate in Ethiopia edged down to 13.7% in July, the lowest in four months, from 13.9% in the previous month. Price growth slowed for housing and utilities (14.3% vs 18.4% in June), restaurants and hotels (16.7% vs 17.2%), and alcoholic beverages and tobacco (10.7% vs 13.9%).
• In a growing spat of the Tech Titans, OpenAI’s Sam Altman is reported to be in the process of co-founding a new brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs and raising funds for it, with a view to taking on Elon Musk’s Neuralink Tech company.
• Rolls-Royce chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic has stated that the company’s future is nuclear and plans to power artificial intelligence data centers with its nuclear reactors, a move which could make it the UK’s most valuable company, its boss has said. The engineering firm has signed deals to provide small modular reactors (SMRs) to the UK and Czech governments to power AI-driven data centres.
•  CoreWeave’s quarterly revenue estimates released yesterday, were way above estimates, with the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools boosting demand for its cloud services. However a higher than expected net expenses loss deterred investors and saw its shares diving by 10%.

Markets by Numbers 

Currencies: 

Currency markets today indicate the US Dollar is currently trading softer against the Euro at 1.16767 and against the Pound at 1.35001 The Yen is currently trading at 147.97 to the dollar. The rand (ZAR)is currently at R17.58 to the US dollar.

Commodities:

• Gold futures prices are currently trading 0.3% higher this morning, and currently at $3347.52.66 per ounce.  
• Copper prices are trading upwards today, with prices currently at $4.5016
• Silver futures prices are trading 0ver 0.7% higher today, and currently at $38.173
• Platinum futures are trading marginally lower this morning, and are currently trading at $1332.90 While Palladium prices are marginally higherer this morning and currently at $1117
• Brent crude oil prices are currently at $66.16, with WTI trading at $63.19 
• Cocoa futures are trading higher today, and currently at $8793 per ton. 
• Coffee futures are down by over -1,7%, and are currently trading at $315.15

Crypto Currencies:

• Bitcoin prices are currently at $119151
• Ether prices are trending around 1% higher this morning and currently at $4638.50 
• $Trumpcoin is currently marginally higher today and trading around $9.25

(All prices quoted at approximately 07H47 Central African Time) 

Other Breaking News in Africa Today

France Acknowledges Cameroon War Involvement

French president Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that France had led a war in Cameroon during the country’s independence struggle in a document made public on Tuesday. Macron wrote to Cameroon president Paul Biya on 30 July to take responsibility for actions of repressive violence against insurgent movements in Cameroon. Macron said this violence took place before and after the country’s independence in 1960. This is the first time that France officially uses the word “war” to describe its actions in Cameroon over that period of time.  The French president’s statement draws from the conclusions of a report written by historians that was presented to both countries in January 2025, that French troops in all likelihood killed tens of thousands of Cameroon civilians between 1945 and 1971.