Africa calling

Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission is spearheading efforts to create a more transparent, welcoming investment environment. We talk to ’Timi Agama, Director General of the SEC and one of the key architects of Nigeria’s new Investments and Securities Act, about building investor confidence in Nigeria’s markets, and potentially unleashing a flood of domestic and international capital.We also discuss the leading global role Nigeria hopes to play in the future of digital assets.

Tarik Senhaji, the CEO of the Casablanca Stock Exchange in Morocco, joins us to talk about Morocco’s role in West Africa and beyond, the stock exchange’s ingenious strategy for encouraging more firms to list, and the impact of generational change in Morocco.

Florizelle Lisser, the head of the US-based Corporate Council on Africa, joins us to talk about new opportunities emerging for American companies to invest into Africa. She also shares some unique insights about investment trends—and how to tap into funding from development finance institutions.  

Deep in the Colombian Amazon, a group of indigenous leaders are working to protect and restore the rainforest using innovative techniques funded by carbon- and biodiversity credits. We talk to Drea Burbank, founder of grassroots conservation-focused B-Corp Savimbo, which is helping create a new market for authentic, verifiable credits that can channel funding direct to the people stewarding the forest.

The World Bank’s private-sector investing arm, the IFC, is pushing into deep-tech investing to help supercharge its efforts to support equitable and sustainable development around the world. We talk to Bill Sonneborn, the IFC’s director of disruptive technologies and funds, about green steel, AI, learning technology and opportunities for smaller emerging markets to benefit from breakthrough technologies.

The tiny East African nation of Djibouti plays an outsize role in tackling conflicts and crises in the Horn of Africa region. We talk to Mohamed Siad Doualeh, Djibouti’s ambassador to the US, about Djibouti’s responsibility as a peacemaker in the Horn of Africa region, and its determination to expand its role as a trade and diplomatic hub.  All of Africa will benefit if the region’s problems can be solved, Doualeh says. “Africa is losing billions of dollars a year to conflict, and it’s high time we turned that around.”

Josh Rubin, portfolio manager at $40+ billion asset manager Thornburg’s Developing World fund, joins us for a stroll through key emerging and frontier markets regions. He digs into the impact of recent developments in China, investment opportunities in the Middle East, why Saudi Arabia appears to be tightening its friendships with a host of nations that are not considered exactly friendly to the West, and how a slight change in sentiment among global investors could tip off much greater changes in emerging markets.

Impact investors  and cryptocurrency advocates have long talked about the potential for blockchain-based technology to transform the lives of people in small emerging markets. The NGO Mercy Corps put its money where its mouth is with an impact fund focused specifically on using the tech to solve some of the gnarliest problems in human development, disaster response and financial inclusion.  In this pod, Mercy Corps Ventures’ Ken Kou shares insights and learnings from their adventures in Web3. It turns out that crypto’s ‘killer app’ might be that it can save lives.

Enthusiasm for impact investing was growing strongly before Covid hit, but the economic and social disruption the pandemic triggered prompted many organizations to rethink their goals and exposed flaws in many impact investors’ strategies. Aleem Remtula, a partner at Developing World Markets, an impact firm with a 27-year track record, shares his insights on how the pandemic affected the impact sector itself, and how investors can use the lessons learned to create more positive impact, more awareness of the need for integrity, and better outcomes for investors and the beneficiaries of their funds.  Looking for ideas? Remtula also shares where he sees opportunities, and where valuations might have been beaten down a little too much.

There’s no doubt South Africa is in the midst of a crisis. But how deep is it? According to John Steenhuisen, the head of the country’s leading opposition party, it’s existential. Steenhuisen explains to FMN why the need for South Africa to repair and enhance its weakening relationships with traditional partners such as the US and the European Union is so urgent, and why his party — which by his own admission has no chance of forming a majority government in next year’s general election — is working to build a coalition that can break the long-ruling African National Congress party's stranglehold on power. Even if that means partnering with the ANC itself. At stake: South Africa’s relationship with the West, its appeal to foreign investors and the welfare of its 60 million people.