Investing in rest of Africa with ETFs

SA is often seen as the gateway to Africa. But how do you invest elsewhere on the continent?

In April, Cloud Atlas Investing launched its AMI Big50 EX SA ETF, giving investors exposure to 15 different African exchanges.

Nastassia Arendse recently spoke to CEO and co-founder, Maurice Madiba, on the SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb.

“We set up a collective investment scheme. I think we were probably one of the first blackowned, black-managed CISes to come out and we are really looking to activate investments into Africa.”

Its ETF has been listed on the JSE since April. Exposure to individual sectors, is almost “a natural function of what’s listed in Africa”.

“You’ll find that financial services makes up quite a big chunk of that, in particular banks. There is one listed bank in every African country, so we brought some bank exposure, sitting at about 30%. We then got telecommunications exposure, like shares of Safaricom, Moroc Telecom, etc.

“And then we’ve got an interesting sector which talks to the African consumer growth story, which is food and beverages.”

This includes a lot of brewery companies, like East African Breweries and Nigerian Breweries, and food companies.”

Returns are looking positive – up 13% as at the end of August, said Madiba.