R85bn to develop infrastructure in Africa – SA’s growth factor is still in contraction

INVESTMENT Fund Africa (IFA), an investment fund with a primary focus on Africa, has announced that it has secured $6 billion (about R85bn) for the first phase of its drive to develop infrastructure in Africa.

This was announced by the investment fund’s chairperson and chief executive, Neil de Beer.

De Beer said this project-focused business was inspired by the lack of modernisation and infrastructure that Africa faced, something he experienced six years ago when doing business in Africa.

“The lack of African investment and the lack of infrastructure development from an African perspective is shocking… the Chinese, the Europeans and Americans, as well as the International Monetary Fund, are not helping in that regard.

“But the normal suspects of investment in the continent are not matched by a shadow African fund that can compete and say, ‘Wait a minute, we are not the only continent at this moment outside Europe that is being attracted to, but we are being fiscally colonised,’ ” said De Beer.

De Beer said the IFA had a macro-strategy with a micro-implementation philosophy. So although there were 55 countries on the continent that needed to benefit, the IFA focuses on only six countries at a time.

The IFA uses the brick strategy, which De Beer explained: “If you throw a brick into the Atlantic Ocean, it will hardly make a splash, but if you throw a brick into a bathtub, you get quite a wave.

“So what we decided to do first is to find countries where the IFA can achieve three things: impact, visible action and implementation, and ensure that the results make a fundamental infrastructural difference.”

Ivory Coast, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique and Mauritius are among the countries where the IFA has “lobbed the first brick”.

De Beer expressed gratitude to Dr Iqbal Survé, Sekunjalo’s and Independent Media’s chairperson, for mentoring him. “I needed help. I needed a mentor. I needed someone to tell me that whatever I was going to do would be okay. So Survé and I met several times at the Vineyard Hotel, near Newlands, and he took time out to discuss the IFA with me. And that’s how I got started,” he said.

“We are committed to collaboration, and our international regulated fund manager will bring that same focus on collaborative opportunities to the IFA’s portfolio development.

“Where the required level of project finance is greater than the funds prudential sovereign or sector limits, partnerships will be offered to other approved funds, and beyond this we will always look for transactions that provide other like-minded investors and local financial institutions with an opportunity to participate and add value,” De Beer said.