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Over the past decades, Africa has explored significant rise in economic growth and investment opportunities. It is no news that Africa has significant growth potential for almost any business. In fact, for every problem or set-back in Africa, there are several great opportunities. Africa is a fast developing continent and many foreign investors understand that there is a lot of money to be made in Africa.
Here are 7 Big Investment Opportunities to Watch out For in Africa this Year:
1. Infrastructure and Affordable Real Estate: Shelter is very important for human sustenance but unfortunately, many Africans cannot afford the exorbitant costs of housing especially in the urban centers. Therefore, there is a huge and untapped market for affordable residential homes across Africa. As an Entrepreneurs or Investor, if you can serve this high-volume market segment, you definitely would make big wins this decade.
2. Retail Businesses: retail is a fast growing sector in Africa, which is immensely contributing to the income distribution expanding Africa. There are many retail products or services in regular high demand in the African market.
3. Fashion Lines: putting into consideration the fact that Africans are highly fashionable, investors or entrepreneurs can manufacture ready-made affordable clothing items, and reduce the need for importation of these items to Africa, which in turn attracts foreign investments due to its huge profit potential.
4. Energy and Power: Reliable and affordable energy lies at the forefront of Africa’s pursuits, to elevate economic growth and sustain the needs of an increased urbanized population. Many countries in Africa still struggle with high costs, low capacity and constant power outages in their day-to-day lives. For a continent that is blessed with year-round sunshine in most parts, solar presents one of the quickest, cheapest, most efficient, and most eco-friendly options to power Africa. Bio-fuel is another source of energy that helps to eliminate the problem of making it possible for waste items to be converted to fuel as a low cost alternative to many African homes.
5. Agricultural Processing: Agriculture in Africa as an investment opportunity is set to be a major growth driver over the next few years, surpassing mining and metals. Even though Africa is blessed with a lot of food resources, the culture of importing processed foods from other continents like Europe, America, China e.t.c has been the norm.
Countries exploring the advantages of agro-processing include Uganda. The majority of Uganda’s agricultural products such as tobacco, fish, and coffee are exported in their raw form. Also exploring the untapped agriculture sector is Ethiopia which is known to have some of the most arable land in the world. Ethiopia spends more than 25% of its budget on agriculture. As the backbone of Ethiopia’s economy, the sector represents around 50% if GDP and over 85% of export revenues and employment opportunities.
6. Money Lending Fin-Tech Apps: in recent times, several fintech Apps have been springing up to challenge and transform how financial services are delivered in Africa. Many people find themselves needing some quick cash before payday and many African countries do not have access to credit cards that can be used to settle some emergency bills before payday. This is what gave rise to money-lending apps that allow people to borrow money to offset some emergency bills. This is a good business concept that also tends to attract foreign investors looking for business opportunities in Africa.
7. Cybersecurity & Data storage: Cybersecurity is fast becoming one of the key emerging business opportunities in Africa because of the potential damages and losses that are at stake. The attacks range from simple email scams to large-scale theft of customer data, fraud, critical infrastructure sabotage, and other malicious activities. Hence, the need for improved, secure and efficient cybersecurity and data storage for companies and organizations in Africa.
Even though investing in Africa is prone to many risks from lack of good infrastructure, power outage, problems from government or policies, regional conflicts, e.t.c; there are still several other investment opportunities in Africa, such as virtual education, urban logistics, waste recycling, health, e-health, digital banking solutions and many more.
