Africa Must Take Ownership of Opportunities
Hubert Danso is the Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of Africa’s voice for investment in the continent, Africa investor (Ai) Group. Apart from being the Managing Editor ofthe Ai magazine, Danso also has the responsibility of advising institutiona
Tell us about the Africa investor CEO Institutional Investment Summit 2015 and the Africa investor CEO Investment Summit 2015, scheduled for this month. Africa investor will be hosting, in partnership with Thomson Reuters, the 8th annual Ai CEO US-Africa Investment Roadshow. The Ai CEO Investment Summit, an invitation-only CEO business and government forum, will take place on the 24th of September and is designed to highlight and enhance Africa’s investment climate, trade competitiveness and job creation agenda, facilitate action and shed light on Africa’s investment success stories.
On the 25th, Ai will then host the Ai CEO Institutional Investment Summit, which will focus on facilitating transactional investment partnerships and coinvestments between select African and US institutional investors, and sovereign wealth and pension funds, to invest in Africa’s fastest growing sectors and capital markets.
What impact will these Summits have on Africa’s untapped capital market and private equity investment opportunities?
Through these Summits, we are pursuing some very specific agenda, including the mobilisation of new, non-traditional sources of capital for the development of Africa’s capital market and infrastructure sectors. These sources include sovereign wealth and pension funds, as well as private equity firms. We will use the Summits to showcase the best in capital market opportunities to these sources and other institutional investors, and facilitate a series of one-on-one meetings around specific transactions, allocations, direct and co-investment opportunities.
For Africa to realise its economic potential, it is critical that long-term industries, such as infrastructure, energy and transport, provide the groundwork for capital market and private equity market growth and job creation in Africa. We are therefore convening this US and African long-term institutional investment leaders meeting, following President Obama’s Africa trip, which highlighted Africa’s economic and entrepreneurship potentials.
The Africa investor CEO Investment Summit will therefore engage the US and African institutional investment community in investment opportunities and partnerships that will support both the US and Africa’s economic and jobs growth.
Is it deliberate that the Summits will take place alongside the UN General Summit on the Sustainable Development Goals?
Yes, Africa investor has a long-standing partnership with the United Nations which draws on our high-level convening power to bring together our institutional investment partners to dialogue and advise African Heads of States on major investment themes, challenges and solutions. Pursuant to that, we co-host an annual African Heads of State and Government Investment Working lunch with the UN during the General Assembly.
These Africa investor Summits form an important next step in forwarding the African private sector’s own agenda in terms of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will take over from the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Africa will be crucial to the global economy going forward and its private sector voice needs to be heard in developing and implementing the post-2015 SDGs agenda and, importantly, in ensuring our leaders are aligning global development commitments with home-grown African development agenda such as the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
It is our fervent belief and message that investment matters and that there is no quicker way to combat poverty and get resources to the poor than through a pay cheque – So, partnering the private sector to build an environment for jobs and private sector growth cannot be understated.
At the Summit, we will present an African Business Statement to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon; African Union Commission Chairperson, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma; President of the World Bank Group, Jim Kim; and African Heads of State attending the upcoming UN General Assembly and 70th anniversary of the UN.
The Ai Business Statement will be launched at the Ai CEO Investment Summit and this historic Statement will restate business’s commitment to tackling poverty in Africa and will call for the harmonisation of agenda and goals between the Financing for Development (FfD) agenda and the UN SDGs in support of the implementation of the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
Tell us about the success and impact of the last Africa investor CEO Infrastructure Investment Roadshow?
The Africa investor CEO Infrastructure Investment Roadshows are extraordinarily important, not just for Africa, but also for the whole developing world, on the issue of infrastructure investment, because it is recognition of where we are failing in infrastructure implementation. But it is also recognition of the new solutions that have been put on the ground by the private sector and the public sector. This year’s Roadshow represented a tipping point for the industry; a recognition that the only way is forward.
The Ai Infrastructure Project Developers Summit held in partnership with IFC InfraVentures and the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) was a historic first for the African continent, bringing together African project developers and projecting development champions to highlight the specific challenges they face.
Amajor disconnect exists between the project developers, investing significant resources designing and taking projects from concept to bankability, and the ultimate government approvals of the same projects to enable them to be financed and received the requisite investment.
Pursuant to this, a key outcome of Africa investor CEO Infrastructure Investment Summit is that, a dedicated network of private sector project developers is being created, which will be a policy advocate for the acceleration of infrastructure project procurement and development. Africa investor facilitated over 200 oneon-one meetings between project developers, sponsors, regulators and investors on specific projects worth tens of billions of dollars during the Ai Roadshow.
What informed the choice of CapeTown as venue for the Roadshow?
The Africa investor CEO Infrastructure Investment Roadshow was timed to coincide with the launch of the African Union and NEPAD-sponsored Continental Business Network (CBN), which Africa investor played a leading role in by establishing and facilitating the launch. The CBN is a transformative grouping of infrastructure investment leaders from the private sector that will act as an advisory group to African Heads of State and the African Union’s Presidential Infrastructure Champions Initiative (PICI), which is responsible for championing the implementation of priority Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) projects across border regional infrastructure projects.
The CBN and the Ai infrastructure Investment Roadshows are crucial elements of the same ongoing agenda, which is to further and accelerate development of Africa’s infrastructure investment flows, project development industry and enabling environment for private sector participation in the design, financing, operation and maintenance ofA frica’s infrastructure.
The launch also coincided with the World Economic Forum onA frica, which also took place in Cape Town this year.