Welcome to Africa Voices, a special publication from the Actis Macro Forum. Actis has been on the ground in Africa for over 70 years now, with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos, Nairobi and Cairo today, but with investments across the continent in all of our principal asset classes – Energy, Real Estate and Private Equity. This gives us a unique perspective not only on the macro economic data available to all, but on how the risks and opportunities these indicators point to are felt on the streets of the cities we live and work in.
In the years since the publication of the original “Africa Rising” narrative, we have seen a lot of the high hopes expressed at that time severely challenged by the decline in commodity prices, economic and political mismanagement and by a continued depreciation in local currencies. However, and as we have been saying quietly for the past 12-18 months, the frustration and concerns of local business leaders have been very gradually turning into a mood of fragile optimism that growth may be on its way back. The challenges of managing Africa’s demographic explosion remain, but as our contributors to this edition hope to point out, some of the lessons of the past appear finally to have been learned.
Read the full publication here.