By SPENCER SWARTZ in London and WILL CONNORS in Lagos

Nigeria has decisively reclaimed the mantle of Africa’s top oil producer, with rising output and crude prices spurring growth in the continent’s most populous country. But the same industry driving the economy—oil—faces a host of challenges.

In the next month, Nigeria’s national assembly is expected to approve energy legislation that U.S. and European oil executives warn could curtail investment. The presidential election early next year may reignite fresh violence in the Niger Delta, the West African country’s main oil region, where Royal Dutch Shell says its pipeline was attacked recently.

The sabotage reflects longstanding discontent among the poor in the area. Some attacks are conducted by oil thieves who set up illegal refineries.

Nigeria—which holds the world’s ninth-biggest proven oil reserves— produced almost 2.2 million barrels a day in July, its highest average since November 2007, according to analysts and traders.

The upswing stems largely from a lull in militant violence against Niger Delta oil pipelines and is linked to a government amnesty deal for militants who had been on a bombing spree against oil-industry infrastructure.

Thanks to the relative peace, idle oil fields are pumping again, allowing Nigeria this year to consistently produce more crude than Angola, Africa’s second-biggest producer.

Output has also increased amid the rise in fuel prices this year. Benchmark U.S. crude prices are expected to average $78 a barrel in 2010, up from $62 last year. That could push Nigeria’s economy to expand by about 7% this year, some analysts say, putting it among the fastest growing in Africa. But the rising crude output masks weaknesses in the industry.

An ominous sign for Nigeria’s production is slumping international investment. Foreign direct investment, mostly in the petroleum sector, sank to $5.85 billion last year from $13.96 billion in 2006, according to a recent United Nations report.

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LAGOS, Nigeria—Two top Nigerian stock-exchange officials were removed and a fugitive former bank executive surrendered, as efforts to clean up the financial sector accelerate.

These developments, together with an expected cabinet reshuffle by President Goodluck Jonathan, come just months before January presidential elections. Mr. Jonathan’s effort to project a cleaner government is considered a centerpiece of his election platform—though he has yet to officially declare his candidacy—and a former head of the country’s financial crimes watchdog is expected to run against him.

On Thursday, Nigeria’s Securities Exchange Commission named Emmanuel Ikazoboh, a former chief executive of accounting firm Deloitte in West and Central Africa, as interim stock-exchange head.

The appointment comes a day after a shakeout at Nigeria’s Stock Exchange, Africa’s second largest. Stock Exchange Director-General Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke was fired and the exchange’s president, Aliko Dangote, was suspended. Mr. Dangote, head of a business conglomerate, is one of Nigeria’s richest men.

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SOWETO, South Africa – Sitting in his cramped, cluttered studio, Richard Hlungwani, also known as Nozinja, also known as Dog, is pushing the beat faster and faster.

“If it’s too slow, they won’t dance,” Mr. Hlungwani says. “They will tell you straight: ‘It’s too slow, can’t it be faster?’”

Mr. Hlungwani, 40, is the producer and driving force behind a new, ultra-fast take on traditional Shangaan music, which derives from the ethnic group of the same name and originated in Mozambique and northern South Africa.

Shangaan Electro, as it has been dubbed by U.S. and U.K.-based promoters, is garnering attention both within South Africa and abroad. The London record label Honest Jon’s recently put out an album (”Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music from South Africa”) of 12 tracks by various Shangaan artists that Mr. Hlungwani produced.

His records have won a number of awards in South Africa. The South African branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken used one of his songs for a recent TV and radio ad campaign. And a YouTube clip featuring one of Mr. Hlungwani’s more successful artists and some break-neck Shangaan dancing has been viewed close to one million times since it was posted in 2007.

The music itself is stripped down to basics: syntehiszier-produced marimba beats, high-pitched singing, and the notable lack of any bass beats at all. But the most riveting aspect of the music is the speed.

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JOHANNESBURG—Ghana has gold, chocolate and a stable democracy. Now it also has a soccer team, backed by much of the African continent, playing in the quarterfinals of the World Cup.

Regional neighbor Nigeria has oil—and another scandal.

After Nigeria returned home with two losses and a tie in the World Cup, President Goodluck Jonathan suspended the team from international competition for two years. Presidential spokesman Ima Niboro on Wednesday also said the Nigeria Football Federation, which oversees the national team, was being investigated for corruption and misuse of funds.

The contrasting World Cup fortunes of the two soccer-loving nations, separated by the two wisp-thin countries Togo and Benin and sharing a common language, English, say a lot about the realities in each place.

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The Nation Is a Titan in Lawn Bowling, If Not Soccer; a Break for Tea and Whiskey

printed on Page A1 of the Wall Street Journal

By WILL CONNORS

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—On a crisp morning, middle-aged men in white pants and white shoes met on a patch of grass here, attempting to bowl a biscuit.

The hundred or so players were competing in a local lawn-bowling tournament, where a “biscuit” is a good shot. But while they came to compete, they were keeping their heads down. No tickets were sold for the event, and there were few spectators. The bowlers didn’t want to upset the organizers of that other big tournament in town, the World Cup.

“Everybody’s hanging back,” says John McArdle, president of World Bowls, the international lawn bowling association.

Local lawn bowlers say they would have preferred to have held a larger, international tournament. But, they say, they consented to a general request from soccer’s governing body, FIFA, not to hold major events during the World Cup.

A FIFA spokeswoman says the Zurich organization doesn’t forbid events taking place, but frowns on those in host cities that “might have an operational impact on the preparations or organization” of the Cup.

The idea that lawn-bowling might pose a threat to the world’s biggest team-sport spectacle might sound far-fetched. Bowling, after all, is a pastime where players often sip whiskey and smoke cigarettes on the field. But as in cricket and rugby—but not in soccer—South Africa is a global powerhouse in lawn bowling.

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As Favorites Fall, Bookies Fatten Up From London to Vegas

JOHANNESBURG—Everyone in England reacted with horror on Sunday after a missed call robbed Frank Lampard of a goal against Germany. Everyone, that is, except the bookies.

English bookmakers were on the hook for more than $100 million had England gone on to win the World Cup. That would have been the biggest payout ever in the history of British bookmaking, according to London bookmaker William Hill PLC.

Sports gamblers are wagering more money than ever on this World Cup, taking advantage of more in-game and remote betting options, and more widespread TV and Internet access.

Even before the tournament reaches the quarterfinals, many Las Vegas, U.K. and South African sports books have seen as much action as they did through the entire 2006 World Cup. Many anticipate at least a doubling of the total handle from that tournament, although the event still pales in comparison with bigger U.S. sports events like the Super Bowl. (The biggest World Cup match-ups draw about as much action in the U.S. as low-tier NFL games, American sports-book directors say.)

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By WILL CONNORS And CHRISTINA PASSARIELLO

SOWETO, South Africa—At this year’s World Cup in South Africa, which kicked off Friday, soccer’s governing body FIFA is trying to squelch guerilla-marketing tactics by those who haven’t paid for official sponsorships. It created new “exclusion zones” that restrict companies from advertising close to its venues and hired agents to help enforce the zones.

But big-name advertisers including Nike, Puma AG, PepsiCo Inc. and others are finding ways to go over and around them. In Johannesburg’s central business district, the skyline-dominating Life Center building has been draped with images of Nike-sponsored players and topped with its logo. Online, a soccer-themed Nike ad has been viewed more than 14 million times by fans world-wide.

Puma, PepsiCo and beer-maker SABMiller, have splashed Johannesburg with their own ads, billboards and elaborate TV and Web spots while being careful not to cross FIFA’s World Cup marketing boundaries. SABMiller has put up an online guide to taverns here and has created special cans that turn into a drinking cup.

Few have gone as far as Nike, which similarly parried with Adidas AG during the 2006 World Cup, to put its logo and brand before soccer fans here. In Soweto, a predominantly black township but home to an emerging middle class, a sleek new Nike-funded soccer training academy opened last week near two World Cup stadiums.

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The Wide Use of Foreign Managers on Local World Cup Teams Has Some Fans on Edge

The opening of the World Cup in South Africa on Friday will give the soccer-mad continent a chance to show off many of the world’s top players on the six African teams participating in the tournament.

The problem, as some African soccer fans see it, is that only one of those teams is led by an African coach.

This World Cup will be the first on African soil, and there are more African teams here than have been at any other World Cup. But that Algeria’s Rabah Saadane is the only African manager at the tournament has provoked not a little hand-wringing among Africa’s soccer-obsessed fans. They fear that foreign coaches, who are frequently brought in at the last minute and are unfamiliar with a team’s players, may actually hamper their countries’ chances at the World Cup. (No team has won a World Cup with a foreign coach.)

“A lot of people [in Africa] still have that mentality that the European knows more,” said Thomas Mlambo, a well-known TV presenter and analyst on the South Africa-based sports network SuperSport.

Host South Africa is coached by Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira, who won a World Cup coaching his country in 1994. Ivory Coast is using a Swedish coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson, who coached England in two World Cups but never got past the quarterfinals. Nigeria hired Swede Lars Lagerback, who coached his country in the 2006 Cup but failed as head coach to qualify Sweden this year.

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LAGOS, Nigeria—The restaurant manager, a tall, skinny Chinese woman named Queen Sun, hurried between tables while admonishing a group of slow-moving waiters.

We had just settled in at Ojez, a Chinese restaurant and bar well known for its live music, springrolls and stars from Nollywood.

Nollywood? Nollywood is the second-largest film industry in the world and only trails India’s Bollywood in terms of numbers of movies produced each year. And Ojez is one of their favorite meeting spots, where actors and directors mingle with producers to pitch themselves or their ideas. Deals are agreed upon informally, as with many things in Lagos, the high-energy entrepreneurial heart of Africa.

In 2006, Nollywood shot nearly 900 movies, almost all straight-to-video. The figure was nearly double Hollywood’s total for the same year. Currently, around 40 movies are shot every month in Lagos, not counting the dozens of television dramas that are also filmed here. The industry, which generates an estimated $250 million a year, is popular throughout Africa and immigrant enclaves in Europe and the U.S.

Upstairs at Ojez, musicians and a few aspiring Nollywood stars were hanging out. Jazz was playing on the speaker system in the main room. The walls were dark red and the lighting yellow. Patrons drank beer and ate fried rice.

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Nigeria has a storied legacy of fierce anti-government musicians, most famous among them the Afrobeat king Fela Kuti (currently enjoying a posthumous popular revival with the hit Broadway show “Fela!”). But since Fela’s death in 1997, there hasn’t been an obvious heir apparent to his musical prowess and political agitations, even among Fela’s two musician sons.

In the magnetic singer Nneka (Nneka Egbuna, 29), the opening act for Nas and Damian Marley’s Distant Relatives summer tour, Nigeria has found another performer capable of drawing global attention.

Nneka pulled herself up from a hardscrabble background in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria and with no family support emigrated to Germany when she was 19 (her father is Nigerian and her mother is German). After years spent struggling to earn a living - including a stint cleaning bathrooms - Nneka found music.

While she has been recording for years in Germany, her first U.S. album, “Concrete Jungle,” was released just last year. Give it a listen and just try not to have it’s hard-driving first single, “Heartbeat,” get stuck in your head. Nneka also has a track called “Viva Africa,” on “Listen Up!” the official 2010 FIFA World Cup album.

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