The investment objective of the African Lions Fund is:

“to achieve long-term capital growth and regular income from a long-only, concentrated, benchmark-unaware portfolio of listed securities that derive the majority of their revenue and earnings from sub-Saharan African economies, excluding South Africa.” 

At first blush, Africa may not be a place to invest in because of our preconceived cognitive biases that — as Tim put it in his article “How can I be so sure it’s safe to invest in Africa?” — Africa is “dangerous, corrupt and not governed by the rule of law.” 

Like Tim, I too am not a buyer of this thinking.  Money can be made in Africa, safely.  My investment recommendation in Tanzania’s Twiga Cement is a good example of this.  To quote Tim:

“In many African countries there are world-class companies that have been operating profitably and responsibly, as good corporate citizens, hiring and training many highly competent local managers and employees, for decades.

“Nestle, Unilever, Cadbury, British American Tobacco, Rabobank, Standard Chartered, Stanbic, Vodafone, Orange, Diageo, Heineken, Anheuser-Busch-Inbev, WPP, Heidelberg Cement, Lafarge, Bata, and Coca Cola are just some of the examples of multinationals with locally-listed African subsidiaries that I can think of.”

“When you buy shares in these local multinational subsidiaries, you are partnering with global firms adhering to the highest standards of governance. And in Africa, they are really “on guard,” because they don’t want to be perceived as doing anything underhanded.”

I admire how Tim is slowly but surely changing people’s perceptions and misconceptions of this huge and promising continent. Asia has peaked and prospered, and now I believe that the future is in Africa.

Tim just recently launched another website, https://africanlionsfund.com/ exclusively for prospective investors. It’s a “duck for sale”, straightforward website where members can download the Information Memorandum and Private Placement Memorandum which contain the nitty-gritty of the fund. To access these documents, you will need to set up an account which takes all of two minutes.