Local capital is an important part of the overall story in Africa. If Africans and African institutions are not investing in their own markets, why should somebody from outside the region think there is an opportunity here? To give credibility to the story they must invest, otherwise the story doesn't hold together.The markets in Africa are all at different stages of development in terms of regulation and knowledge about this asset class. For example, in Nigeria, the regulatory framework has changed considerably and pension funds are increasingly able to invest in different asset classes. South Africa and Botswana may be a bit ahead of the game; however, Botswana's internal markets lack depth, so the investment strategy is oriented more externally. Then you have the South African pension funds, which have a lot of capital and are now starting to look beyond South Africa. As you can imagine, South Africa combined with the rest of Africa is a great story. So for them, understanding the challenges and the characteristics of investing outside of South Africa is their learning curve.Limited partners in these markets face different issues, but I can see them all converging to form a very big investor group in the next five years. They are starting from virtually zero in terms of exposure to private equity, so allocations are going to go up from 0-5 per cent to maybe 10 per cent or 15 per cent of their portfolio. On the other hand, pension fund assets under management are increasing at exponential rates because their markets are growing, and more people are coming into the workforce. The importance of African pension funds as a source of capital is not to be underestimated.
