Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news, Government and business leaders
Speaker 1: from around the world met in Qatar this week, and
Speaker 1: African economies wanted to make sure they were on the agenda.
Speaker 2: Africa CAPITALIZI enabling the private settor to drive okay straight
Speaker 2: and lead the growth and transformation and the content. I
Speaker 2: believe that these are sense we need to do to
Speaker 2: take Africa to the next steps.
Speaker 1: With world trade rebalancing. After the inauguration of President Trump
Speaker 1: in the US, African leaders are looking to the Middle
Speaker 1: East for a new source of investment.
Speaker 2: African institutions I building capacity, but we need to also pattern.
Speaker 2: I will wrestle the war to have robust payment capacity
Speaker 2: to transactions as well as facilitate trade.
Speaker 1: On today's podcast, we're bringing you the best of the
Speaker 1: Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. From long term investments to
Speaker 1: emerging markets. Is the hope for Africa's continuing growth coming
Speaker 1: from the Middle East. I'm Jennifer's Abasaja and this is
Speaker 1: the Next Africa podcast, bringing you one story each week
Speaker 1: from the continent driving the future of global growth with
Speaker 1: the context only Bloomberg can provide. On today's special episode,
Speaker 1: we're bringing you some of the key moments from the
Speaker 1: Qatar Economic Forum, where I was speaking to a number
Speaker 1: of Africa's foremost voices from the world of business, economics
Speaker 1: and politics. We start in Nigeria, where volatility in the
Speaker 1: oil market has meant lower earnings for Africa's biggest oil producer.
Speaker 1: I spoke to aminu Umar Sadik, the Managing director of
Speaker 1: Nigeria's Sovereign Investment Authority, to find out where he sees
Speaker 1: future investment coming from.
Speaker 3: As the old prize goes off and down, that actually
Speaker 3: affects the amounts of influence that coming to nsiety that
Speaker 3: actually give us the recourse to invest.
Speaker 1: Then what does that mean for the outlook moving forward
Speaker 1: for NSII? Do you focus on other assets potentially? Do
Speaker 1: you look to goal? Do you look to Yeah, where
Speaker 1: else are you focusing?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 3: So on the future generations fun side. At the end
Speaker 3: of last year, actually clearly valuation levels were high and
Speaker 3: so we pivoted to cash and that allowed us to
Speaker 3: do a couple of things at the beginning of this year.
Speaker 3: The first thing was we decided to pivot away from
Speaker 3: alternatives into defensive assets, particularly growth assets as well as
Speaker 3: assets investment. Great corporate bombs, the second thing that we
Speaker 3: did was actually for our long only portfolio, a long
Speaker 3: only developed market's portfolio. We also decided to pivot away
Speaker 3: from the US to Japan, to Australia and to Europe.
Speaker 3: And then finally, what we decided to do was to
Speaker 3: rationalize our assets allocation to see how we could consolidate
Speaker 3: the number of names that we had into fewer, higher
Speaker 3: quality stocks.
Speaker 1: Did they pivot away from the US happened prior to
Speaker 1: this new administration coming in. What was the thinking behind that?
Speaker 3: Just the diversification play. It was important given where we
Speaker 3: saw the markets, how buoyant the market was, that we
Speaker 3: began to look elsewhere just to ensure that we had
Speaker 3: more robots portfolio. We had no political considerations, so to speak.
Speaker 3: And then on the infrastructure side, I think we're looking
Speaker 3: at a number of large scale transactions. I think the
Speaker 3: first thing that we're doing was around healthcare, particularly around oncology.
Speaker 3: You may have heard the NSIA co founded a company
Speaker 3: called METSUV that focuses on oncology, on diagnostics, and on
Speaker 3: cat labs, and we are expanding that significantly. The second
Speaker 3: thing that we're doing is off the back of Mission
Speaker 3: three hundred, the proposition that both the World Bank and
Speaker 3: the AfDB co founded the NSIA Africa fifty Sustainable Energy
Speaker 3: for All are also put in together five hundred million
Speaker 3: dollar distributory renewable energy platform.
Speaker 1: You were just talking about how a number of African
Speaker 1: sovereign World fund are going to be coming together in
Speaker 1: just a few weeks in a Bouja. You were mentioning
Speaker 1: is there a focus then on potentially local debt markets
Speaker 1: as opposed to looking international. Do you think African sovereign
Speaker 1: wealth funds are positioned to find that capital on the continent,
Speaker 1: And that's.
Speaker 3: An excellent question. I think when you look at the
Speaker 3: size of local pension funds relative to our infrastructure deficits,
Speaker 3: that is the kind of capital that we need to
Speaker 3: be looking to mobilize towards infrastructure financing. And I think
Speaker 3: we can do more as multilaterals within the continent, as
Speaker 3: sovereign wealth funds within the continent, to begin to find
Speaker 3: ways to actually enhance blankable propositions and find ways to
Speaker 3: give comfort to conservative capital, particularly the pension funds, to
Speaker 3: actually finance our infrastructure projects. On the sixteenth, alongside other
Speaker 3: African sovereign wealth funds, we will be hosting the African
Speaker 3: Sovereign Investment Forum in Abuja, and that will be the
Speaker 3: main theme of discussions at that point.
Speaker 1: What's your target then for the end of day out
Speaker 1: of the year in terms of financing and MOBILIZINGCAPAGA.
Speaker 3: We're looking at a minimum of one point five to
Speaker 3: two billion dollars as a start, and we are hopeful
Speaker 3: that a combination of our fifteen of US will get there.
Speaker 1: But Africa is not only looking to export oil, it
Speaker 1: also wants to market the skills and talent of young
Speaker 1: Africans to the rest of the world. Here's Hendrik Detoit,
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of Asset Manager ninety one, on the
Speaker 1: role AI is playing on growing emerging markets in Africa.
Speaker 5: I'm very excited about the solution of real world problems,
Speaker 5: i e. Getting research time which wouldn't have been justified
Speaker 5: in labs on the West coast or East coast of
Speaker 5: the US because it was deemed the problem was deemed
Speaker 5: too small or the economic outcome wasn't good enough. So
Speaker 5: real farmers enabling weak states to operate really well. I
Speaker 5: mean you could digitize and technology in a able the
Speaker 5: weakish developed developing country states into something really special. Without
Speaker 5: turning them into the surveillance state. I think the downside
Speaker 5: is and I think where I'm quite bullish about Africa
Speaker 5: in particular in emerging markets, because Africans aren't spoilt. So
Speaker 5: all these reasonably unproductive, very expensive white collar jobs in
Speaker 5: the West, we are going to lose lots and lots
Speaker 5: of them. And everyone can't become a yoga instructor, right.
Speaker 5: Africans are kind of not in that food chain and
Speaker 5: therefore will adjust in a way which is faster and better.
Speaker 5: But I worry about the general migration from manufacturing jobs
Speaker 5: and you know, to which may be supplanted by robots
Speaker 5: in the developed world, to the services jobs that would
Speaker 5: have been exported to the developing world, the sort of
Speaker 5: India bungal Or story that may not happen again. Look
Speaker 5: at the think about how many software developed is Microsoft fired?
Speaker 5: But think of the people behind those software developers. For
Speaker 5: if one of them, there's probably ten of them in India.
Speaker 5: You know other places which do it. And I don't
Speaker 5: know the answer. So there's an up and a downside.
Speaker 5: I think Africa, because it's used to being tough and
Speaker 5: Africans are very flexible, can probably deal with it better
Speaker 5: than any other part of the world and.
Speaker 1: Stick with us. When we come back, we'll hear from
Speaker 1: some of the African Startups to Watch in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five and take a look to the future at how
Speaker 1: a changing climate could mean changing investments. Will be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back today. We are coming to you from the
Speaker 1: Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, where business and political leaders
Speaker 1: from Africa have come to make the case for investment.
Speaker 1: African startups were here in Doha to find support from
Speaker 1: global investors, and we're showcasing some of the best of
Speaker 1: the continent with Bloomberg's inaugural twenty five African Startups to
Speaker 1: Watch lists.
Speaker 5: In it.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Awusu Akoto, the founder of Ghanaian logistics
Speaker 1: company Freezelink, and also Chilufia Mutale, founder of the Zambia
Speaker 1: and fintech firm Ishanti. I started by asking them about
Speaker 1: the opportunities and challenges for startups on the continent and
Speaker 1: also difficulties with some of the gaps in funding.
Speaker 6: We have a lot of foreign influence in our ecosystems.
Speaker 6: Even the private act companies, the local private act companies
Speaker 6: generally you see that they're DeFi fund is so development
Speaker 6: finance institution funded. So with the USA drawing back with
Speaker 6: I think probably some inertia when it comes to the
Speaker 6: development finance cooperation in the US, even the Brits are
Speaker 6: drawing back. It's definitely had some ripple effects in terms
Speaker 6: of funding. But at the same time, our pension funds
Speaker 6: sit on so much capital and so what we're seeing
Speaker 6: in Ghana is more momentum from the pension funds, more
Speaker 6: focused on alternative assets, which are the ripple effect on
Speaker 6: deploying capital that ends up in some of our local startups.
Speaker 1: Has that been your experience, Luthia.
Speaker 7: Yes, Well, it's well known that less than two percent
Speaker 7: of funding goes to women led businesses. It Shandy is
Speaker 7: a women lead enterprise and globally less than two percent
Speaker 7: of funding ghost women led startups. So you can imagine
Speaker 7: just in Africa alone what percentage is that. And funding
Speaker 7: has been a challenge for us. We raised back in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty and over four years we're still trying to
Speaker 7: raise another funding round and it's a bit of a
Speaker 7: challenge and that's why we have to innovate, build a
Speaker 7: lot of resilience, stay lean, embrace technology, so that we
Speaker 7: can then evolve around other strategies to basically scale our businesses.
Speaker 7: And that's the ranking of number four on Africa's Fastest
Speaker 7: Growing Companies really is a testament to our resilience that
Speaker 7: we've built admiss the challenges that we have around funding.
Speaker 1: How do you scale you're talking about scale within other markets,
Speaker 1: within communities. How do you do that without that access
Speaker 1: to funding? What are some of the innovative ways you
Speaker 1: maybe finding that you can get there.
Speaker 7: So we have strategic partnerships that we struck with mobile
Speaker 7: network operators that have customer base of over ten fifteen
Speaker 7: twenty million customers. Through these strategic partnerships, we are able
Speaker 7: to leverage off the customer base. They have their access
Speaker 7: to marketing and their direct access to cost of acquisition,
Speaker 7: so it's much lower because they already have that existing base.
Speaker 7: It costs much less for us to reach out to
Speaker 7: these customers through these partnerships. So revenue sharing models the
Speaker 7: new way to go through collaborations without raising any funds,
Speaker 7: collaborating with banks who are not able to reach the underserved,
Speaker 7: where we provide the technology, we reach out to the
Speaker 7: customers and the banks then provide the funding and you
Speaker 7: have revenue sharing models and.
Speaker 1: You're seeing the willingness by some of these institutions.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, they are willing. They may not have the
Speaker 7: technology and the capabilities to serve the underserved, but they
Speaker 7: have the capital. And then we have the tech, we
Speaker 7: have the market access, we have the strategic partners, and
Speaker 7: then we also have peer to lending platforms that really
Speaker 7: help us work with the communities who believe in our mission,
Speaker 7: who then provide the investments as low as even one dollar,
Speaker 7: and then that then is then on lend to borrow
Speaker 7: us on the platform. So are connecting investors to borrow
Speaker 7: us on the platform, and we've raised over six million
Speaker 7: dollars just through peer to peer lending and issued over
Speaker 7: eleven million dollars in loans for over the last three years.
Speaker 2: How do you.
Speaker 1: Balance a koto the need for some of the solutions
Speaker 1: that you both are speaking to on the ground. You
Speaker 1: know locally what the need is there, but also you
Speaker 1: talk about the investors and the others how you have
Speaker 1: to appeal to. How do you balance that?
Speaker 6: So africase not selicond Valley, and I think that oftentimes
Speaker 6: our startups do have a spray and prayer proach when
Speaker 6: it comes to funding. We've been guilty of that in
Speaker 6: the past, but what we found is that it's better
Speaker 6: to try and find those parts of patient capital who
Speaker 6: really understand the context. And so we are working, for example,
Speaker 6: with an asset for NTS company. They already have an
Speaker 6: asset finance fund in East Africa and we're looking to
Speaker 6: work with them to deploy modular code storage for our
Speaker 6: farmers so that they can pay on a page you
Speaker 6: go basis. So really is the balance of identifying what
Speaker 6: they need is and connecting with those who really understand
Speaker 6: the local context.
Speaker 1: And finally, let's take a look to the future. With
Speaker 1: the impacts of climate change becoming clearer on economies across
Speaker 1: the world and especially in Africa, sustainability is going to
Speaker 1: become a key part of investment decision making in the
Speaker 1: years to come. I spoke to Martha Osier from the
Speaker 1: Africa focused investment firm ADNIAM about what this means for
Speaker 1: Africa's economies and what opportunities it could create.
Speaker 4: In Kenya, we have established today what is the largest
Speaker 4: second largest retailer. When we invested, they had nine stores.
Speaker 4: Today we have sixty one stores, and we have partnered
Speaker 4: with another green mobility company called Rome Electric and one
Speaker 4: they do delivery. But I think more important for the
Speaker 4: startup is we provide them infrastructure where they can build
Speaker 4: their charging stations. So in terms of financing, it's not
Speaker 4: necessarily that or you have to do another capital race.
Speaker 4: Can you find people in the ecosystem who you can
Speaker 4: leverage and you reduce your capex costs because I'm sure
Speaker 4: to set up or to go to I don't know
Speaker 4: how many landlords or you know, property owners and say
Speaker 4: I want to establish charging stations. Yet if you have
Speaker 4: a supermarket with sixty one physical brick and mortar locations,
Speaker 4: that's an easy way for you to plug into the system.
Speaker 4: So we're not directly funding startups, but I think for
Speaker 4: startups that have applications to our existing businesses, that's an
Speaker 4: indirect way of financing and supporting them to grow.
Speaker 1: Martha, what is going to be key for momentum in
Speaker 1: innovation to continue to build over the next few years.
Speaker 4: I think it's has been said by all the panelists.
Speaker 4: It's solving real problems. Yeah, if I just relate to
Speaker 4: what Ayula was talking about. In our supermarket, at least
Speaker 4: fifteen percent of our products are fresh that we are
Speaker 4: sourcing from twenty thousand farmers. Yeah, if we could provide
Speaker 4: them a way to store those products. What happens in
Speaker 4: Kenya is the fresh products are transported overnight because it's cooler,
Speaker 4: and we know, at least in Kenya over fifty percent
Speaker 4: of farm losses are happening because of a lack of
Speaker 4: that cold chain. Okay, So partnering with the supermarket providing
Speaker 4: coolboxes to these farmers one, I think solves your financing challenge.
Speaker 4: But two, you're solving a real problem for a customer
Speaker 4: who ultimately could either be you know, your exit plan
Speaker 4: or your exit plan to to other supermarkets. So I
Speaker 4: think what is key for startups is make sure you're
Speaker 4: solving a real problem for people who are in your ecosystem.
Speaker 4: Don't only look at private equity, but also look at corporates,
Speaker 4: especially corporates that have been sponsored by private equity, as
Speaker 4: potential ways for you to grow your business and ensure
Speaker 4: your sustainability.
Speaker 1: Of course, many economies are looking for new investment opportunities,
Speaker 1: like those at the Katar Economic Forum. After the US
Speaker 1: under President Trump, signaled it would be stepping back its
Speaker 1: role in the global economy, with South Africa one of
Speaker 1: the economies hit quite hard by the US pulling back
Speaker 1: from aid spending and imposing tariffs. President Zero Ramaposa has
Speaker 1: been in Washington for talks with President Trump. The South
Speaker 1: African president found himself though ambushed by President Trump in
Speaker 1: the overall, if there.
Speaker 8: Was Afrikana farmer genocide, I can bet you these three
Speaker 8: gentlemen would not be here.
Speaker 6: Each one of those white things you see is across and.
Speaker 1: There's approximately a thousand of them.
Speaker 3: They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers.
Speaker 8: So there is criminality in our country. People who do
Speaker 8: get killed, unfortunately through criminal activity are not only white people.
Speaker 8: Majority of them are black people. And we are now
Speaker 8: the farmers are the farmers are not black.
Speaker 4: And I'm saying that's good or bad, but the farmers.
Speaker 1: Are not black. Next week we'll bring you the full
Speaker 1: analysis of the fallout of those talks and what the
Speaker 1: future looks like for US South African relations. And you
Speaker 1: can see all of our coverage from the Qatar Economic
Speaker 1: Forum on Bloomberg platforms now, including the Next African Newsletter.
Speaker 1: Will put a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 1: This program was produced by Adrian Bradley and tiwa Adebayo
Speaker 1: don't forget to follow and review the show wherever you
Speaker 1: usually get your podcasts.