by Robin Amlôt
CPI Financial is committed to delivering the most relevant financial news, features and analysis to bankers and businesses. For the last 14 years its flagship publication, Banker Middle East, has offered transparent, accurate reporting and analysis of the banking and finance community in the MENA region alongside, for the last seven years, coverage of the phenomenal growth of the Shari’ah-compliant financial sector through its stablemate Islamic Business & Finance.
CPI Financial is committed to delivering the most relevant financial news, features and analysis to bankers and businesses. For the last 14 years its flagship publication, Banker Middle East, has offered transparent, accurate reporting and analysis of the banking and finance community in the MENA region alongside, for the last seven years, coverage of the phenomenal growth of the Shari’ah-compliant financial sector through its stablemate Islamic Business & Finance.
The expertise that created and grew these journals has now been focussed on launching a new sister publication – Banker Africa – that will bring the skills and analytical reporting that have made the company’s magazines required reading to a new audience.
Why Africa? The answer is simple – Africa’s time has come! By 2025 the continent will have more than 60 cities with over a million inhabitants and by 2040 will be home to the world’s largest working-age population. What’s more, Africa is already home to highly desired and desirable locations for investors. Analysis in 2012 by international real estate consultancy Knight Frank showed property in Nairobi, up 25 per cent, and on the Kenyan coast, up 20 per cent, leading the gains in the firm’s global Prime International Residential Index.
The rise of Africa’s emerging middle class will see the continent’s financial services industry expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15 per cent through to 2020 with mobile banking a particular driving force. Elsewhere in this issue you can read exactly what kind of ‘game changer’ the coming of smartphones truly is for financial services.
Recently Anthony Eaton, Manager of the JM Finn Global Opportunities Fund, noted that income in Africa has virtually doubled since 2000 and private consumption in the continent is already as big as it is in India and Russia. Consumption is widely anticipated to double again by 2020, which ‘would put it at the same level as China in 2009’.
Katie Koch, Senior Portfolio Strategist and Chief of Staff for the Goldman Sachs Asset Management Office of the Chairman, is a particular fan of opportunities in Nigeria, of which she said, “It has 160 million people with a median age of 19, so it is incredibly attractive demographically. We think it’s one of the countries most likely to rank among the BRICs in terms of importance to the global economy in the future.”
Late last year, Ahmed Heikal, Chairman and Founder of Citadel Capital, the largest private equity firm in Africa claimed, “Africa is rocking with opportunities for savvy private equity players.” The continent has vast mineral resources, holding eight per cent of the world’s oil reserves and seven per cent of its natural gas reserves. Heikal believes in the ‘SANE’ choice in particular; the SANE countries (South Africa, Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt) account for one-third of Africa’s population and more than half of the continent’s FDI, foreign reserves, exports and trade.
Yet misperceptions remain; fear of risk in Africa, especially as evinced from outside the continent, is ‘overblown’ according to Heikal. Further, there is more to the Africa story now than many realise. Dr, Suleiman Ahmed Walhad, CEO of Dahabshil Bank International, told Banker Africa, “... go to Mombasa, Kinshasa or Durban, to name a few, you can see an Africa that isn’t portrayed on [the world’s] TV... Awareness is what is needed – true Africa must be known. Africa must be able to market itself...”
Which is not to say that enormous opportunities for growth in financial services do not exist... they do. Recent reports suggest 65 per cent of the continent’s population is unbanked with penetration standing at 60 per cent in urban areas and less than 20 per cent in rural areas. With Banker Africa we aim to provide a journal for the industry to report on and assist its growth and development in the exciting years ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment