Recently, South Africa hosted the African leg of the World Economic Forum – a conference that is held in various parts of the globe in order to discuss economic development and the partnerships between countries. In the run up to the event that took place at the beginning of May in Cape Town, the Financial Times looked at the concept of it being “Africa’s Year” in terms of what foreign investment will mean for our continent.
The article links to an Ernst and Young Report aptly named, “It’s Time for Africa” – a report that looks at the attractive features of the continent – and they do not mean only in terms of its beauty. This report reflects on Africa as an “attractive” option for foreign investors and looks forward into the continents future endeavours. Ernst and Young have reported that foreign investment in Africa will increase to amount to a figure of at least $150bn in the next four years, which has resulted in a keen interest in long term investment in various aspects of Africa.
As we already know, with this type of announcement, there will be an equal amount of true believers as well as critics and now with Africa being a part of the official emerging markets sector together with Brazil, Russia, India and China, there still remains doubt that it is not yet Africa’s time to shine. Those who reside in Africa however, tend to disagree, with the majority of respondents saying that improvement has indeed taken place in comparison to others who believed that the situation has deteriorated in Africa over the past few years or have remained the same.
Despite the opinions of Africa’s future in terms of economic improvement, tourism, construction financial services and telecommunications continue to flourish and for those of us residing in various countries in Africa, we are able to see first-hand the growth potential of this continent and the positive outcomes yet to be achieved.
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The way China and India are becoming more dominant powers in producing goods and services of the world. There wealth growing and in return providing trust to the business world, prices go up and things get expensive due to standard of living going up! Africa will be the next place once their economic confidence grows and this will help africa considerably. It would be very helpful for them and reduce aid to the continent in return providing also even more competition. But these things will take time. How long it will take only time will tell.