DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, September 9, 2026/APO Group/ –Canon Central & North Africa (CCNA) (www.Canon-CNA.com) has received a Gold Award at the 2026 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards for its Management Team Development Programme (MTDP), recognised under the category “Best Unique or Innovative Leadership Development Program”. This achievement marks CCNA’s second consecutive year of winning top honours at these global awards.

 




  

The Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards recognise achievements in human capital management, with entries evaluated by an independent panel of analysts, industry experts and experienced practitioners against criteria including business need, programme design, innovation, adoption and organisational impact.

Gaining competitive advantage and sustainable success in Africa’s dynamic, diverse and ever evolving business landscape, requires leaders who transcend functional boundaries, embrace agility, and lead through a shared organizational perspective, united by a common goal.

The award-winning Management Team Development Program (MTDP) was designed to help lay the foundation for this ambition. Anchored in Canon EMEA’s Leadership Principles, the program elevated enterprise leadership capability within the Management Team.

Somesh Adukia, Managing Director, Canon Central & North Africa, said: “Winning this Gold Award for our Management Team Development Programme is a proud moment for CCNA. It reflects the strength of our leaders and the work our HR team has put into creating a programme tailored to our business.

This program played a pivotal role in bringing the Management Team together in a development experience and laid the right foundation for the next decade of CCNA’s growth journey . This recognition reinforces our commitment to the continuous pursuit of leadership excellence.”

Deepali Arora, HR Director, Canon Central & North Africa, added: ” Capability is most powerful when developed within the right business context, aligned to organizational priorities. The MTDP program was intentionally designed and delivered fully in-house with an innovative co-facilitation approach.

The program enabled the Management Team to move beyond Functional excellence and strengthen collective organizational leadership. This what makes the recognition truly special.”

This latest recognition builds on CCNA’s success at the 2025 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards, where the organisation received two Gold Awards for its Future Leader Program and CCNA Clubs. Together, these achievements reflect CCNA’s continued focus on creating meaningful, locally relevant development opportunities that strengthen its people and leadership capabilities across the organisation.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, August 20, 2026/APO Group/ –Sancorp Group, the Dubai-headquartered energy and commodities trading group with active operations across sub-Saharan Africa, will participate as a Platinum Partner at African Energy Week (AEW) 2026 in Cape Town from October 12-16. The partnership, AEW’s highest tier, reflects the growing commercial engagement between Gulf-based energy groups and African markets.

 




 

Sancorp operates across the full energy value chain, from crude oil and refined product trading through upstream asset participation and oilfield services. Its trading counterparties include Trafigura, Mercuria, Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Dangote Fertilizers, Société Ivoirienne de Raffinage (SIR), PETROCI, the Tema Oil Refinery and Ghana’s Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST). To date, Sancorp has structured over $2 billion in oil and gas investments across the continent.

The group’s vast commercial network makes its presence at AEW a prime opportunity for operators, refineries and traders looking to build or expand supply relationships in West Africa. The Ivory Coast is Sancorp’s largest and most active market, with projected annual flows exceeding $600 million across refined products, crude, LPG and fertilizer deliveries into SIR and PETROCI.

In July 2026, the group delivered more than 36,000 tons of gasoil into SIR’s Abidjan terminal. Sancorp also holds a government-certified license to import and distribute fertilizers in the country, supplying 500,000 bags of urea and NPK annually through the Ministry of Agriculture.

In Ghana, Sancorp supplied more than 300,000 tons of gasoil and gasoline in 2024, while in Nigeria its subsidiary SCP Energy maintains NIPEX-certified upstream service capabilities and is a certified export trading counterparty to the Dangote Refinery. The group is also expanding into Angola, where it is registered with Sonangol and in advanced discussions on minority interests in two deepwater production blocks and an equity stake in one of the country’s planned grassroots refineries.

For AEW 2026 attendees, Sancorp’s model represents the kind of Gulf-to-Africa commercial bridge that is becoming more prominent across the continent’s energy trading landscape: structured finance, physical trading capacity and on-the-ground presence across multiple West African markets, all housed within a single group. The Platinum Partnership gives Sancorp visibility across the full AEW program as it looks to scale its trading book and deepen its upstream and refining positions.

“Sancorp is built around relationships and execution in markets where both of those things are hard to get right,” says NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber. “This is a group that is actively trading, investing and building upstream positions across West Africa, and their presence at the event creates real opportunities for the operators and governments in the room.”

As a Platinum Partner at AEW 2026, Sancorp is expected to engage operators, refineries, NOCs and investors on trading partnerships, upstream investment and supply-chain development across West and Southern Africa.

 

CAIRO, Egypt, August 21, 2026/APO Group/ –China Chengxin International Credit Rating Co., Ltd. (CCXI) has affirmed African Export-Import Bank’s (Afreximbank) (www.Afreximbank.com) AAA issuer credit rating with a Stable outlook for the second consecutive year, underscoring the Bank’s financial strength and strategic importance.

In its 2026 Credit Rating Report for the Bank, released in Beijing on 30 July, CCXI said it expects the Bank’s credit rating to remain stable in the next 12 to 18 months.

 




 
 

The report affirmed Afreximbank’s “advantages, including high strategic positioning, sound risk management system, flexible business development, strong profitability, prudent liquidity management and a very high coverage ratio of current assets to short-term debts,” saying that these strengths “strongly supported the overall credit strength of the Bank”.

Commenting on the rating, Mr. Chandi Mwenebungu, Managing Director, Treasury & Markets and Treasurer said:

“CCXI’s affirmation of our AAA rating for a second consecutive year is a strong endorsement of Afreximbank’s financial strength, disciplined risk management and enduring relevance to Africa and Global Africa. It demonstrates our ability to deliver on our mandate, support our member states through periods of uncertainty and mobilise capital from the breadth and depth of diverse funding pools across local and global markets, while maintaining the financial resilience and institutional strength expected of a leading multilateral development bank.”

The rating also reinforces Afreximbank’s access to diversified funding sources, particularly in China, while enhancing the Bank’s growing footprint, profile and market presence in one of the world’s largest and most important capital markets. In 2025, the Bank issued its inaugural RMB2.2 billion Panda bond, becoming the first African multilateral development institution to access the Panda bond market, and subsequently became a direct participant in China’s Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), further strengthening its role in facilitating China-Africa trade and investment flows and partnerships.

The CCXI affirmation follows S&P Global Ratings’ assignment earlier this year of ‘BBB+’ long-term and ‘A-2’ short-term issuer credit ratings to Afreximbank, with a Stable outlook. Afreximbank also holds investment-grade ratings from GCR (A), Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCR) (A-) and Moody’s (Baa2).