Miles Morland, a pioneering Africa investor, has spent more than two decades looking for deals in places where you cannot drink the tap water. If his experience is anything to go by, finding successful private equity opportunities has more to do with sharing a glass of the stronger stuff in African bars.
“In Africa there are hundreds of deals but you have to go and look for them. In the west, investment bankers bring you deals . . .[but], in Africa, investment bankers are way down the food chain. You need to go and hang around the bars . . . to find the deals,” Mr Morland says.
The case for investing in sub-Saharan Africa is clear. It has some of the fastest growing economies in the world, boosted by a nascent consumer class increasingly thirsty for everything from credit to cappuccinos. And it represents just 4 per cent of the emerging markets private equity asset class – emerging Asia takes the lion’s share at 63 per cent – suggesting there is plenty of room to grow.