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STORY: Here are five business stories making headlines in sub-Saharan Africa this week.

Operations were stopped at all of Sibanye Stillwater's gold mines on Thursday (March 10), as two major South African unions began a strike over wages.

The National Union of Mineworkers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, as well as the smaller United Association of South Africa, voted for a strike last week.

That's after the Solidarity union split away to accept Sibanye's final offer of a 5% annual pay increase.

Also grinding to a halt, planes in Nigeria.

Allen Onyeama, chairman of Air Peace, told a parliamentary committee on Thursday that some airlines may not survive the next few days if jet fuel prices keep increasing.

He said fuel has risen to 670 naira a liter, up from 190 at the end of last year.

Global jet fuel prices have scaled a near 14-year peak as Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered a surge in the crude oil market.

Also in aviation - Ethiopian Airlines has emerged as the buyer of five Boeing current generation 777 freighters, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The order, posted as an unnamed airline in Boeing's monthly update on Tuesday (March 8), is separate from a recently announced provisional agreement for later deliveries of a successor model - the 777X freighter.

It was not immediately clear whether the airline would press ahead with both sets of orders, but several airlines have been aggressively adding capacity to address a boom in cargo demand amid the global health crisis.

Something else that's sky-high this week - profits at Africa's biggest mobile operator by subscribers, MTN.

It resumed annual dividends on Wednesday (March 9) and declared a higher payout than suggested by previous guidance, after reporting a 31.8% increase in headline earnings per share.

And finally the International Monetary Fund has warned that Africa's economic outlook is particularly vulnerable to higher food and fuel prices, prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva told African finance ministers and central bank bosses on Thursday that the conflict could also results in reduced tourism revenues and diminished access to financial services.