The continent is home to 30% of all natural resources in the world, yet it contributes only 2.9% to the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Africa holds a whopping 65% of the world’s arable land and yet there is nothing to eat for an estimated 346 million people in Africa.
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African countries occupy the bottom rank of the global hunger index –Nigeria (103), Kenya (87), Ghana (64), and Egypt (56).
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Africa is rich in natural resources, but its resource wealth is one of the lowest among the world’s developing regions, both in aggregate and per capita terms.
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African countries derive their wealth from extractive activities. There is a potential to increase the fortune of the economies of emerging markets by taking ownership of the value chain.
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Africa is simply not competitive enough to take advantage of these opportunities for reasons not limited to short-termist thinking and rent-seeking among the ruling class, unfavorable policies that scare capital investments and innovation, and infrastructure deficit.
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We are emphasizing a new metric in our investment decisions – probing where the company sits in the value chain of their industry and then assessing if there are (a.) status quo players or (b.) reformers.
