Truly Unlocking Africa’s Potential!

Written By Tshepo Magagane

If Africa was to actually lead the unlock of mining – it would create private capital ecosystems – I will continue to put the Khoemacau eg if a local vehicle – Batswana or other SADC – had just put up USD8m, they would have turned that into USD500m – even at as 2/20 level, that would have been USD100m of carry – how many people (or professionals) do you know that have that type of liquidity or even close to it.

I saw what happened with European PE – when our analyst classes started making moves, the entire industry had USD30bn AuM – spot, I can give you guys who retired with deep 9 figures / I can give you guys who started out at firms that had USD750m but a few months back, closed a 10bn deal (not fund), etc etc!

I saw what happened with Australia and Bulks in the 00s – yes, Australia at a national level had transformational economic activity but also at an entrepreneur level (when you have capital sitting with individuals, you are able to catalyse the entire economy – see how many “feasible” projects across sectors are not “feasible” because the parties cant put together the early stage works capital…sooo many)!

When I look at the difference just allocations like these can make in Africa – I get excited but also frustrated.

I have said, 99.9% of the time, there are no vanilla solutions – we need bespoke solutions for each bilateral scenario eg if I were to tell you that we are working on a PPP that has zero involvement from government but DBSA is the MLA in there – you have blue chip institutions on the equity side – BESPOKE, BILATERAL, ESOTERIC solutions.

It starts with Private Capital solutions directed at the extractives sector – everything else is a derivative of this – manufacturing, fertiliser, energy, spares, fuel, infrastructure, water, FCMG…