Thursday, December 02, 2010

Investing in Africa Moment

Legatum Africa Awards: Three Kenyan companies - Biodeal Laboratories (generic drug manufacturer), Craft Silicon (financial software developer) and Mellech Engineering (construction & engineering), have been selected as finalists in 2010 Africa Awards for entrepreneurship.

They are competing for $350,000 in fund prizes, with a grand prize of US$ 100,000 and five other prizes of US$ 50,000 each. The other finalists in the top 10 are Malcom-Ezindaleni Hydraulics (SA) NTR Technology (Botswana), Planbuild (Uganda) Sigma Electric ( Ethiopia) Steel & Tube Industries (Uganda), Tutuka Software ( SA) and Wilkins Engineering (Ghana) – who were also shortlisted from more than 2,700 entries.

Legatum, a privately owned investment group and Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm, organized the awards, who's winners will be announced on December 6 in Nairobi.

Agriculture Equity: The African Agriculture Fund, a private equity fund closed on US$ 135 million of funding in November 2010. The funds will be invested in the agriculture value chain from primary production to processing at $20 million per portfolio company.

The Fund also has a dedicated SME sub-fund and a technical assistance facility of 10 million euros, to support out grower schemes in large companies and business development services in SMEs.

Transparency Equity: Late in October, Omidyar and Hivos created the Africa Transparency and Technology Initiative (ATTI) - a fund that will support technology-driven initiatives that give citizens the tools to hold their governments to account. Omidyar Network will invest up to $2 million and Hivos will administer the fund.

Diaspora Fund: The Enkare Innovators Fund was launched and is seeking US$850 Million from Diaspora for investments in Eastern, Southern & Northern Africa with early focus on Kenya, Tunisia, Egypt and South Africa. This is via a private placement that will run from January to July 2011 and is promoted by Cauave Deaa Et Al Capital Partners

Silicon Valley Visits: The Kenya ICT Board will host a team from I/O ventures, comprising entrepreneurs & founders will from Silicon Valley who will visit Nairobi on December 14 & 15 and who are seeking young ICT entrepreneurs to mentor.
Mombasa housing development
Impact Investing: Impact Investments are a new asset class as per a report being launched this week in Nairobi, London and New York - by the Rockefeller Foundation, Global impact investing network, and J P Morgan.

These refer to investments that have an intended purpose of positive social or environmental good besides a financial return – and probably what Acumen Fund have been referring to as patient capital.
- Impact Investments are primarily debt or equity, and are investments not philanthropy investments
- They studied 1,100 investments and found that about 500 were less than $500,000, and only 35 were more than $10 million
- Impact investments are founds in sectors like agriculture, water, housing, education, health, energy and financial services (micro-finance is the most mature sub-sector)
- There are now metrics, tools, ratings, conferences – all devoted to impact investing and how to measure non-financial impact; One benchmark called IRIS (based on IFRS) and others are Pulse and GIIRS . Currently impact investments are measured primarily by investors own proprietary systems, or by a mix some investor goals such as job creation, asset accumulation, or energy efficiency
- The report has a robust outlook for the sector and concludes that there are potential impact investing requirements over the next 10 years of between $400 billion and $1 trillion, with potential profit of $183 billion to $667 billion, and with the bulk of these to be found in the urban housing sector.

Further Reading

Invent for Mobile: CGAP article which asks how viable companies in mobile health and mobile money can attract VC funding and interest.

Large Private Equity: FT article - about private equity in Africa by Andrea Bohnstedt (@andreabohnstedt), the publisher of Ratio Magazine

8 comments:

havuz said...

thank you very much

peruk said...

thanks a lot man

prefabrik said...

thank you..

fotoğrafçı said...

ı like this thnaks

fotoğraf çekimi said...

this is very well. thank you

çocuk montu said...

oo greatt greatt

toptan takım elbise said...

magnificient...

maç özeti ve golleri said...

thank you very much for this good sharing.. supper!

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