Tag Archives: AVCA

The 13th Annual AVCA Conference

May 10, 2016 rachel_eaton

THE 13^th ANNUAL AVCA CONFERENCE

Dates: 25^th – 27^th April 2016

Location: Sheraton Addis – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The AVCA Conference is the flagship event for the African Private Equity and Venture Capital industry and provides an important platform for GPs, LPs and investors interested in the continent to discuss the most pertinent opportunities and issues of the year.

The 13^th annual conference focused on making the business case for private equity in Africa by highlighting the wide array of investment opportunities, strategies employed and success stories. It also saw the launch of two AVCA research reports, the AVCA/EY Exit Study, providing valuable data about the exits landscape in Africa, coupled with key information on how fund managers create value and deliver commercial returns; and finally the AVCA Sustainability Study which examined how private capital is helping to drive ESG standards across the continent.

Gong was on site managing all communications requirements of the conference.

https://www.avcaconference.com/

Insight

Lagos: Notes from the “surprising, not simply rising” continent

April 8, 2014 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

Sarah Caddy

News broke that Nigeria has overtaken South Africa to become Africa’s largest economy as the 500+ delegates at the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association’s 11^th annual conference in Lagos returned home (in my case, to a Saharan sand-strewn London).

Africa’s most populous country’s government released revised figures that more or less doubled estimates for its GDP, a testament to its increasingly diversified economy and growth of services that tap into the expanding consumer story. Most notably the telecommunications sector has increased from 0.8% of GDP to 8.6%.

Nigeria’s minister for economy and finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is cited by the FT stating that the revision will “validate” the investment thesis to foreign investors increasingly searching for returns in the region.

They may not need reminding, however. AVCA/RisCura/SAVCA research released at the conference, noted that 24% of investors into private equity already find West Africa to be the most attractive region.

“What excites you about Nigeria?” asked William Wallis, Africa Affairs Editor at the FT in his interview with Michael Power, Investec, at the conference. “Its people are extraordinarily enterprising” came the reply. “Africa is not just the rising continent, it is the surprising continent.”

Though with Nigerian pension assets under management (currently NGN4 trillion/$25 billion) estimated (at the conference) to double in just three years, local – rather than foreign – capital may be the investment force to be reckoned with.

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Read more insights from the AVCA conference in Lagos from the Financial Times here.

Insight

Finding Alpha in Africa

April 22, 2013 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

Sarah Caddy

Joining the African Venture Capital Association’s Board of Directors’ meeting, I sit awaiting my turn to present on the crucial role communications has played in supporting the Association in recent months.

I am privileged to a sneak preview of some ground breaking research, collated over several months. Given the need – which we hear reiterated over and over again in our work with all our African clients – for independent and well-researched data on the African markets, I think it is worth summarising here.

First, Cambridge Associates, in partnership with AVCA, has developed the first African PE Performance Benchmark, which serves to help investors assess and participate in private investment opportunities in Africa. The findings of the benchmark were wide-ranging, as illustrated by the resulting media coverage, but a key headline was that African private equity funds outperformed US venture capital over last decade. All good news for Africa.

The positive stories didn’t stop there: AVCA and Ernst & Young also announced their joint research on African private equity exits. Private equity is a clear winner; the research shows that African PE firms are not only making excellent headway with generating exits, they are making strong returns in the process – almost double that of the JSE All Share Index.

When the research later broke to the packed hall of 400+ delegates here in Cape Town, Twitter went wild. The appetite for research of this kind is clearly huge from industry and media alike, with most of the afternoon of day two spent facilitating journalist calls and appearances on CNBC. It will be interesting to follow the impact these regularly updated reports have on the industry in months and years to come.

Read more on AVCA’s conference from The Economist’s Boabab correspondent, here.

THE 13th ANNUAL AVCA CONFERENCE

Part of The Wilful Group

THE 13^th ANNUAL AVCA CONFERENCE