Higher Finance

Perspective By Ceaser Siwale

When we started in “high finance”, European Private Equity had a total AuM of cUSD30bn – average fund sizes were around USD750m to 1bn.

German unions used to call PE really unsavoury names.

From mid-00s to now, we have seen this industry flourish (followed on by private credit – this is important as well given what is happening to bank lending due to B III).

Spot, firms raise that 30bn per fund!

Africa needs to undergo the same process – we need to create capital ecosystems – they simply are not there.

People will say “there are no opportunities in Africa” and I simply go “that person has no idea what they are talking about – spot, I can give you deals that we are working on “Diversified industrials – USD1bn, Roads – USDD350m, Copper – Zambia alone is going to need USD12-15bn to unlock independent projects).

We need to tranche this capital from key institutions in the likes of South Africa (GEPF, PIC, UIF, Mineworkers, etc); Botswana (Pula, MDCB, et al), Angola SWF, various countries pensions funds to be able to support this – no one is coming to save us!

And another angle from the Mining side – AfDB needs to have a defined process to take advantage of the guarantees from the EU when creating capital ecosystems.