fbpx

Africa’s ‘Sleeping Giants’ Present Better Investment Opportunity – Barclays

Africa’s ‘Sleeping Giants’ Present Better Investment Opportunity – Barclays

Africa’s so-called “sleeping giant” economies present foreign investors with better opportunities due to their fast growing markets and untapped industries, coupled with a population boom, financial firm Barclays said in a new report.

The banks says the continents overlooked economies, such as Angola, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a forecasted combined population size that will be as large as that of the US by the end of the decade, present new investment opportunities that are better than what the three usual economies of South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya offer.

“By 2020, the five ‘sleeping giant’ economies of Ethiopia, DR Congo, Mozambique, Ghana and Tanzania that we have identified in our Index, will alone represent a population of circa 325 million people, comparable with the US, and experiencing rates of economic growth that were once the preserve of India and China,” Rob Roughan, head of global corporate at Barclays Bank Ireland, said.

“Household spending for these countries is also set to nearly double, so companies that establish themselves in these markets now will be positioned to reap the awards of rapid growth by 2020.”

Roughan was presenting the Barclays Africa Trade Index, which measures the opportunity and openness of 31 sub-Saharan Africa economies. to Irish business persons.

The index showed that trade between Ireland and Africa had jumped more than 43 percent to about $1.64 billion in recent years, with Nigeria alone growing by two folds to over  $514 million in 2013.

The report showed while Irish trade with South Africa, it’s largest trade partners on the continent, has shrunk 7.2 percent to $571 million  and with Kenya has only grown by 2.5 percent; The country’s trade with countries like Angola have increased seven-fold to $200 million.