Investment agencies: What’s in it for you?

When you’re looking for investors, investment agencies should be your first port of call. They can list your business opportunities and put your business on the map. Here are a few popular agencies around the continent.

By Craig Falck for Africa Report.
Photograph:  © Rene Jansa | Dreamstime.com

Using an investment agency might just be the best idea to secure funding. Once you’ve applied to these agencies, your business is placed on a list that is accessible to investors and other businesses with an investment portfolio. This is the perfect tool to fast-track your chances of winning investment funding as you don’t have to source the investors yourself. Instead, the investors approach you and you’re safe in the knowledge that they’re legitimate and have been screened to pass rigorous legal requirements.

These agencies also safeguard the investors by assessing the businesses that apply with them to make sure that they’re viable concerns and that their clients (the investors) won’t be throwing their money down the drain on a business with little or no chance of success. By ensuring that businesses and investors unite to form a stronger team, investment agencies stimulate their economies by strengthening them with enterprises that will both make and spend money for some time.

Here are a few notable agencies around the African continent:

• Wesgro is the official investment agency of South Africa’s Western Cape, a province known for the business hub of Cape Town. Wesgro assists foreign importers, local exporters and investors who are searching for business opportunities by networking and promoting strong economic agreements. Their website provides a smorgasbord of info, giving visitors everything they need to know about business in the province. Wesgro puts international buyers, exporters, and investors all in the spotlight.

• A little further north and Comesa rears its head. The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa provides the region with an international gateway to showcase the region’s economic competitiveness. Like Wesgro, growth and upliftment are central to this agency’s mandate. Comesa gears itself towards improving countries’ economic standings by developing trade, customs and monetary affairs, transport, ICTs, industry and energy, gender, agriculture, environment and natural resources.

• Staying in the east of Africa, in one of the continent’s fastest growing economies, is the Kenya Investment Authority. The KIA is a government agency established in Kenya in 2004 to promote business and investment in the country. They do this by implementing new plans to boost investment and host investment information gatherings in the country and on the international stage.