There has been increasing talk of Africa being the next big boom, especially in technology. Without saying too much about what I think, I would like to hear WSO's opinion on the future of Africa, including for investment purposes.
I know there is a LOT of corruption, and I have great hatred for the ANC (as it currently is, not Mandela's ANC) and Mr. Zuma Booo. However, South Africa appears to be one of the more developed economies. Provinces such as the Western Cape that is run by the DA rather than the ANC, as well as a few select VC's / private sector people, are doing quite a lot to improve the investment ecosystem here.
If you believe there will be growth and improvement, where in Africa will the growth be led? South Africa? Nigeria? Why?
I've looked at deals in subsaharan Africa over the past few years and did a few, but it's a tough place to do business. I'm sure SA is better but I feel like a lot of large corporates are already there and have taken a lot of the opportunity already so we've looked at Ghana, Kenya, Bots (it's just small), Angola, Nigeria, and probably a few more. Those are the countries where I physically went to check out deals at least. PE and project finance deals in nat resources, infrastructure, tcom, electric generation and some other random things. Corruption is rampant (and I've been doing things in India for about 7 years so I get the brown paper bag stuffed with greenbacks culture) and you really don't want to run afoul of FCPA, which is a huge competitive disadvantage as an American when you have China snapping up all sorts of nat. resources with no worry of going to jail for a bribe that's a 100% standard way of doing business there, it can get dangerous, the infrastructure, even in the best of countries (leave aside SA) is horrid once you leave the major cities (and they're not good in the cities) making logistics difficult, you have an largely uneducated populace so I feel like other than resources deals and some infrastructure it's a limited industry base (something like manufacturing would seem to make sense-very low labor costs-but there's no infrastructure to move shit around and power is hardly existent, and with other low cost manufacturing countries like Vietnam on the rise, there's no reason to do it in Africa, and other than SA, consumer credit is tough to come by so it's tough to sell to consumers anything unless you're selling a can of Coke.
Having been to SE Asia 15-20 years ago and having spent time in Africa recently, they're nothing alike. Maybe Asia 40 years ago and even then I doubt it. Probably comparable to India before they liberalized in the early 90's but India has less violence. When I was getting out of undergrad in the mid 90's you could go to the Gulf countries (Qatar, UAE, SA, etc) with a western education and get paid 2-3x what you could in NYC or London, and I know guys a few years older than me that said the same thing about Asia (ex Japan and HK) in the 80's, but Africa's not like that at all. They just don't have the money or infrastructure in place.
As other have noted, Africa sounds like one giant place from our ivory towers in the US or UK, but each country can be and is very different. We always try to find local partners we can trust and have them be the face of the company-less likely to rip off a local (but still likely to do so) and having a local is necessary to help you navigate how they do business and introduce you to the right people.
If you're truly interested in Africa, there aren't a ton of IB's (from what I've seen the BB's may have an office in SA that serves all of subsaharan africa, but I don't think you could very easily get recruited and ask to go to Africa) or funds (at least that I know of) that are totally focused on Africa, but you might want to check out a government org like the IFC. They co-invested on a couple of our things there and it's a safe way to get to know Africa because it's an World Bank sub so all of the infrastructure is there. There's also a group in DC, Delphos Intl, that's basically an IB that draws from US and intl govt funding sources like the IFC, ExIm or OPIC and funds deals. They're small and they work in any emerging country but they are pretty active in Africa.