Africa: The Last Investment Frontier
Thursday, August 9, 2012
If you are the adventurous sort and happen to find yourself strolling the streets of Tripoli, Libya, you may smell the familiar aroma of cinnamon buns baking. U.S. bakery chain Cinnabon opened a new café in downtown Tripoli, making it the first American franchise to set up shop in the country. You can bet that more will be following.
With many of the traditional East Asian and Latin American emerging markets now comfortably developed into middle-income nations, investors and entrepreneurs are shifting their attention to the next big growth market—Africa.
In a year in which growth forecasts have been slashed across the globe, Africa has been surprisingly resilient. Meanwhile, the IMF forecasts that Africa’s growth rate will be 5.4% this year and 5.3% in 2013. For a continent best known for its chronic civil wars and HIV epidemic, that’s not half bad at all.