fbpx

Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Ready To Invest $5 Bln Across Africa

Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Ready To Invest $5 Bln Across Africa

Written by Chris Vellacott and Karin Strohecker | From Reuters

Angola’s fledgling sovereign wealth fund has identified direct investments in sub-Saharan Africa, and is poised to start deploying up to a third of the $5 billion it has been endowed by the government, its chairman said.

Jose Filomeno dos Santos said the fund had set up a series of special purpose vehicles to identify opportunities in commercial infrastructure, energy, mining, agriculture and real estate.

He was speaking to Reuters in London as the Fundo Soberano de Angola (FSDEA), set up in 2012 to invest Angola’s oil wealth, announced it now has assets of $5 billion following a final top-up of $1.35 billion made in June.

The fund will also deploy another third of its endowments, around $1.66 billion, to “opportunistic” investments around the world, seeking to buy up companies with a focus on sectors that could complement its activities in Angola and elsewhere in Africa.

“This is interesting for a fund such as ours because we have a need to attract talent and a need to bring technology to the (African) continent,” he said.

Such targets might include “companies that maybe are based in saturated markets in Europe and the United States that could be refocused to investing in our region of the world,” he said.

Another third of the fund’s assets are being deployed to liquid financial assets – fixed income and equities – in developed markets, though dos Santos did not disclose what those investments were.

According to audited results for 2013 released on Wednesday, the fund had total assets of around $3.65 billion prior to the final top-up, and allocated $24 million to set-up costs during the year.

Read more at Reuters