Africa: Investment Opportunities

I have been steady posting articles regarding the remarkable emergence of the African market. Currently, many well renown economic experts from around the world - inspite of the many daunting challenges Africa still faces - are singing the praise of high yield investment opportunities. To be precise, investors can expect a higher return on their African investment than other world markets.

Why?

Standard Bank Africa, the parent bank of Stanbic IBTC in Nigeria, belongs to the latter group. “Africa is on the rise”, says Terry Moodley, the bank’s Chief Executive, Personal and Business Banking Africa.

Using a series of data and charts which indicate a continent with rising economic growth rates, rising middle class, increased urbanisation, rapid growth of mobile phones and huge size of uncultivated arable land, he explained to a group of journalists from different African countries why the Standard Bank Group believes that the continent is the best place to invest and do business.

Despite global economic crisis, African countries have been growing at 5 per cent on the average since 2002. Six African countries, having economic growth rates ranging from 7.6 to 11.1 per cent, are among the ten high growth countries in the world from 2001 to 2010. Similarly, seven African countries, having growth rates ranging from 6.8 to 8.1 per cent, have been predicted by the Economist Magazine to be among the 10 high growth economies from 2011 to 2015.

Also the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that 19 African countries would enjoy economic growth rates ranging from 6.0 to 8.5 per cent over the next two years. With these growth rates, the collective gross domestic product (GDP) of African countries is expected to rise to $2.6 trillion by 2020, from $1.6 trillion in 2008. read more