Africa to buck recessionary trend

While visiting East Africa last week I had the opportunity to meet with both President Museveni of Uganda and President Kagame of Rwanda to discuss the global financial crisis. It is apparent that there is a lot of innovative thinking going on in Africa right now, around how to resist the severe impact of the Global crisis and maintain the flow of FDI.

A Recent article in Time Magazine ‘Africa a Business Destination’ demonstrated this, reporting that while ‘Africa, usually the poorest performing region in the world economy, is now likely to be among the best-performing’. A consequence of not venturing into the derivatives markets or subprime lending as the west did has left the continent relatively immune to the Global Crisis. While recent the latest estimates for global growth this year look bleak, the same article reports that Africa will ‘buck the recessionary trend’ and grow over 3% this year.

New ideas are emerging regarding investment in Africa in sectors such as Agriculture, Infrastructure and ICT. It is a new reliance on business as cash rich countries such as China and the Middle East look for new markets in which to invest, that will fuel this growth. Even the Investment funds in the UK, Europe and the US are beginning to take serious notice of Africa as an investment destination, practically the agriculture sector.