S Sudan: new skyscraper, bad timing
Just as South Sudan’s finances are running out and investors are thinking about packing up and leaving, an “ultra-modern” office block might seem the least viable investment going.
But try telling that to the developers behind the $17m project, UAP Holdings. The 12-storey Equatoria Tower is set to be the tallest building in Juba, the southern capital more famed for dust and containers that double as homes than high rises, or anything approaching modern. Continue reading »
Nairobi the regional hub: another day, another opening
The latest addition to Nairobi’s regional hub status comes from South African bank FirstRand, which opens a representative office in Kenya this week.
The bank joins three others that have opened up in Nairobi in the past four years, along with corporates such as Samsung and PwC and companies set on regional expansion such as Nestlé and Dow Chemicals, the $60bn company whose CEO Andrew Liveris visited Nairobi this week. Continue reading »
Sierra Leone: a one-stock shop
A random assortment of dark-wood desks and chairs crowd the room. The tatty carpet is no longer glamorous but it is still just about red. A big-handled bell sits on a centre table.
Welcome to the Sierra Leone Stock Exchange. Number of stocks traded: one. Continue reading »
East Africa: development funds put $40m into private equity for microfinance
East Africa has just gained its 30th home-based private equity fund.
Progression Capital Africa’s first fund, which was launched in Nairobi on Thursday, will put $40m to work in microfinance across the region. Investing funds from three European state-backed development institutions, it’s ready to accept gains of only 10 per cent to 15 per cent – far less than the 30 per cent sought by private sector investors – as long as the projects generate decent social benefits. Continue reading »
Kenya stock market: potato & cabbage
Peter Mwangi, CEO of the Nairobi Securities Exchange, is fed up of Kenyans getting investment wrong.
The NSE had a calamitous year in 2011, with the all-share index falling by a full 30.6 per cent, driven down by a currency crisis that gathered force late in the year.
But foreign investors didn’t seem to mind, staying put as domestic investors deserted the market. Foreign fund managers have now reaped the benefits, enjoying an 11.5 per cent gain in the year to date. The locals have lost out. Continue reading »
PE in Kenya: more deals please
Private equity in east Africa is punching below is weight. The region attracted nearly a third of the 66 private equity deals done in sub-Saharan Africa in 2011 – but their value was just $188m out of a total $3bn, or 6 per cent. Deals worth six times as much were done in west Africa. Continue reading »
Tanzania: a brake on integration
Tanzania has long dragged its heels among its east African neighbours as they heave themselves towards harmonising everything from tax law to capital markets. Ambitious to a fault, the five-member East African Community foresees a single currency this year, and political federation by 2015.
Neither will happen, not least because they can’t even sort out the basics. And because Tanzania, despite being the most populous country in the would-be bloc, fears domination by Kenya, which is a bit smaller in population but much more dynamic. Continue reading »
Dangerous donkeys, Rwanda’s president and Somali extremist Islamists might not at first seem to have much in common. But they are united by a phenomenon sweeping Africa: Twitter.
In the first survey of its kind, Portland Communications and Tweetminster analysed 11.5m Africa-located tweets and 500 of Africa’s top tweeters from the last quarter of 2011. Continue reading »
Investing in Africa: catch-up time
When they are not ignoring Africa altogether, big-hitting institutional investors regularly bemoan the continent’s illiquid small markets, political insecurity and shaky regulations, or fret that despite pretty decent returns little or nothing would make them touch the continent right now.
But as Africa’s economies grow and its nascent middle class starts spending into the trillions of dollars, with all the accompanying developing of banking, insurance, construction, retail and more, it is time for catch-up. Nevertheless, some simply can’t fathom the best route in, be it through stock markets, private equity or even property. Continue reading »
Kenya to India: exporting the mobile money model
At a leafy Nairobi private members club that so delights in a bygone era it bans telephones, Michael Joseph, former chief executive of Safaricom, is telling his well-to-do audience they don’t understand mobile money.
“Our target market was actually the guy standing outside there waiting to serve you dinner or drinks…we didn’t aim for you,” says the current strategy advisor to the World Bank and Vodafone. The UK company owns 40 per cent of Safaricom, the telephone company that launched a mobile money transfer service so successful it speedily took over Kenya’s economy and business school syllabuses worldwide. Continue reading »
Safaricom: feeling the shilling pain
If proof were needed of the impact of Kenya’s collapsed shilling, look no further than half-year results for the country’s biggest telephone company.
Safaricom net profits for the six months to the end of September, out on Wednesday, are down 48.3 per cent, to 5.4bn shillings ($55m). Continue reading »
Mobius: stuck in a lift? Privatise it
On his current whistle-stop tour of Africa, Mark Mobius got stuck in a lift in Lagos not once but twice. The reason? Power failure in Africa’s giant oil producer.
The doyen of emerging market investors was in the midst of sussing out his $827m Templeton Frontier Markets Fund, whose cumulative performance is down 1.4 per cent on last year. Thanks to lifts going nowhere, he is more wed than ever before to fixing power, opening up governments and floating state assets. Continue reading »
Kenya’s own YouTube takes to the air
The black, red and green stripes of the Kenyan flag behind the word “Tube” say it all. Kenya has its very own version of YouTube, the online video platform that has 800m users a month worldwide, uploading seven years’ worth of video to the site every day.
For now, it’s a Kenyanised version of youtube.com but in the next few days the youtube.co.ke address should be fully up and running. Continue reading »
Kenya ups rate, big time
At last. After nine months of weak-willed interest rate rises and even the odd misplaced reduction, Kenya’s central bank has finally hiked base rates by a figure worth writing home about: 400 basis points.
The move takes base rates to 11 per cent and is a belated effort to rescue the shilling, which has the dubious honour of world’s worst performing currency this year, having falling about 30 per cent. Last week, it fell beyond 100 shillings to the dollar, a painful psychological threshold, to an all-time low of 104.15. Continue reading »
PwC putting $100m into Africa
The latest long-term investment into Africa comes from PwC, which on Monday said it would put $100m into the region over the next five years. PwC is among several international organisations that have upped their spending in east Africa of late, and the firm believes the value of the continent’s economic output could double to nearly US $3,000bn by 2020. Continue reading »
| About this blog | Headlines email | Blog guide |
| Regulars | Series | Archive |
Older entries
Stefan Wagstyl
Josh Noble
Rob Minto
Pan Kwan Yuk
Jonathan Wheatley
Heba Saleh