Africa Report analyses what are the key sectors for business opportunities in Southern Africa.
International tax consultant, business correspondent, lawyer and business editor Dr Eduardo de Proft Cardoso recently wrote an article for the African Tax Experts online group in which he spoke about the key investment sectors in Southern Africa’s economies.
In the article, Dr Cardoso singles out the following as the fastest-growing sectors in the region: mining, information communications technology, services, construction, and agriculture. He goes on to note that South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zambia are vital players in the marketplaces for platinum, gold, diamonds and copper.
Apart from South Africa, mining sectors in this region are not mature and so they have comparative advantage in commodities production. This region of the world holds the largest reserves of copper, gold, diamonds, and cobalt and offer huge opportunities to investments,” he says in the article.
He also notes that foreign investment into the telecommunications sector has flowed in thanks to the liberalisation of the industry, and that cellular telephones are one of the fastest-growing and most exciting environments because of the upswing in mobile banking services. Another key sector for investment opportunities remains infrastructure, given the inadequate and vastly inferior standards when compared to international counterparts. Dr Cardoso notes in his article that countries like Namibia and Lesotho remain fantastic business opportunities for investors, given how much money is spent on public works annually. Due to these growing sectors, the need for building and construction has also increased, which provides further investment opportunities for international businesses as well as job creation and economic investment within the countries themselves.
Banking and finance is undoubtedly one of the most important sectors in Southern Africa and is providing great opportunities for investors. One only needs to look at the African investment currently being implemented by local banking institutions such as Standard Bank, Absa bank and Nedbank, as well as international investment from firms such as Bank Of America, HSBC and Deutsche Bank to see how important this sector is. In the article, Dr Cardoso also lists agriculture and mining as the largest areas for investment due to the poverty in Southern Africa as well as the land available for these industries.
Africa as a whole represents incredible potential when it comes to opportunities from foreign investors. Thanks, largely to South Africa, Southern Africa offers enticing and business-savvy opportunities that should attract a large portion of investment coming into Africa, and hopefully this will help the continent to build itself up to a level where it is able to compete on equal footing to the rest of the world’s financial powerhouses.
