As the everyday retail investor keeps changing the investments landscape in the West, Africa needs to reintroduce herself to the global everyday investor as the next investment destination…
It’s 4:47 PM here in Africa as I write my first medium post and many more to come about how beautiful Africa is; her indelible landscape, amazing Safaris, her industrious people, diverse culture, and of course her vast land fill with investments opportunities. This journey has been a long time coming over several months, my Cofounder and I sat down together to chart a new course to reintroduce Africa to the world. This time however, would be different and with a different story line to an entirely different audience.
Oh, before I get carried away, we will have a lot of time to talk about how beautiful Africa is and how great her people are, but for today, we want to talk about why we are here, what we are building, where we want to get to and how we hope to achieve this.
Africa, a healthy investment destination!
Africa has long been promoted as a healthy investment destination especially to foreign institutional investors who have continue to invest in Africa. They have explored North, South, East and West of Africa and have invested in both public and private companies, infrastructure, commodities, agriculture and the people, creating value for themselves while also making critical developmental strides. Investments have come in form of FDIs and FPIs directed towards greenfield investments, private and public quoted companies, African financial markets and other great courses. Although these have come with some pains and unfair distribution of returns, we, as Africans, have been grateful for these investments.
However, while the investment capital has created some value, even with the inequities, there still isn’t enough to address the investment shortfall Africa desperately needs. Africa’s public and private investment capital gap is still in the $Trillion according to the World Bank and other Global Research Institutes. Additionally, the present capital inflows is still highly concentrated, expensive and the flow is driven mainly by institutional, bureaucratic and diplomatic forces. The capital is also hot, waiting to flee once there is any sign of a cold. In simple terms, investment capital inflow into Africa has been far from being fair, efficient and adequately priced.
We researched financial markets worldwide for reasons behind this. The most obvious which came to us is that we do not have the adequate spread of foreign participants and the market has not been democratized. A dozen of foreign participants control about 30% of the investing activities in Africa financial markets! Why is this one of the last investments conduit which has practically shut out smaller global institutions and the everyday retail investor? We dove deeper and identified a lot of reasons for this: from expensive retail investing cost, to lack of risk management tools, lack of retail infrastructures, to financial markets operating in silos and unfair institutionalization of the investment process in Africa. And so, further emboldened, we decided to talk a bold stab at this to change the narrative!
Retail Investors becoming more powerful!
With an upsurge in savings and investments App in the US and other countries, the trend is changing in the way money, savings and investments decisions is being made at the very lowest levels. Investment Apps, the likes of Robinhood, Stash, Public, Revolut, Acorn, M1, have seen record sign-ups by everyday retail investors and have continued to grow their assets under management and transaction volumes at a faster pace compared to the institutional behemoth, the likes of Fidelity Investments and Charles Swab. This has forced Institutions to begin offering products like zero commission and fractional investing so everyday investor could easily come into the market. The everyday retail investor is finally altering the investment landscape from Wall Street, Canary Wharf, to Singapore and it is the only fair way to go!
We were told that wealth is created when land, labor, entrepreneurship and capital are effectively and efficiently deployed. While Africa could boast of all these factors, she still has a low level of capital stock needed to accelerate her developmental growth comparably to those of the Asian Tigers. In simple terms, Africa needs more investment capital.
As the global investment landscape changes and tilts towards the everyday investors and these new kids on the block starts playing critical roles in the investments landscape, Africa needs to reintroduced herself to the rest of the world, this time to the global everyday investor. It is time for a paradigm shift, it is time to democratize global investments into Africa!
The false narrative..
What have you heard about Africa; poverty, famine, crime, disease, war, militancy and corruption right?. Well, what the global institutions do not tell you are about their successful investment stories and the good side of Africa which they have been benefiting from for ages.
With 54 Countries, 1.3Billion+ people, 60% below the age of 25 years, some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, commodity-rich continent, $2.2Trillion+ Market Cap, 10+ robust Financial Markets, with diverse financial and investment products, Africa, is simply the Final Investment Frontier.
A lot of everyday investors living in North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia have long been interested in how to participate in the African story. Africans living in Diaspora who sit on about $450Billion investable capital have also had challenges trying to invest back home through very credible, simple and efficient means.
Building the solution, an Investments App for the global everyday retail investor.
We sat down to think through how we could solve this, how we could change the African story for the better, and how we could mobilize retail capital at the lowest level to help bridge the investment gap which Africa desperately needs to create value, reduce poverty, diseases, fix her infrastructure and grow the economy whilst at the same time delivery economic value to her investors globally.
So we created Hash, yes you heard us right, as in “Hashtag#”. It pulls all available financial market investments from the 54 countries in Africa into a simple platform and interface, simplifies the investments process and makes available all the risk management tools needed to successfully invest in Africa, this time though, for the everyday global retail investors. #AfricanInvestmentsApp.
Hash is a simplified way for the global everyday retail investor to invest, diversify and hedge in African financial markets starting with as little as $100… think Robinhood for African Securities!
It is going to be a very long journey, so we ask you to come on board with us. It is time to reintroduce Africa to the global everyday retail investor.
Invest, this time, this moment. For Africa!
