Think Bigg

We had a really interesting meeting this weekend with a guy who is raising money to build a sugarcane to ethanol facility in Mozambique.

Despite all of the gloom and doom news you see on television, Sub-Saharan Africa, with projected growth of 6.8 percent this year, is apparently the next “once in a lifetime” opportunity. At least according to Stephen Jennings, the billionaire founder of Moscow brokerage Renaissance Capital, who plans to double his investment in Africa to at least $1 billion this year.

According to Bloomberg,

“`If Russia was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, sub- Saharan Africa is a second once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Jennings, 46, in an interview at his Moscow office May 23.

Jennings started Renaissance in 1995 with former bankers from Credit Suisse Group including Boris Jordan and the bank has since helped Russian companies raise more than $15 billion. The native New Zealander is looking to Africa as Russia’s benchmark stock index heads for the first decline in eight years and as competition increases from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Africa’s longest expansion in more than three decades is fueling demand for capital from overseas. The International Monetary Fund last month raised its economic growth forecast for southern Africa to 6.8 percent this year from 5.7 percent in 2006, boosted by oil-exporting Angola and Nigeria.

Renaissance plans to open a Dubai office to help channel oil money from the Persian Gulf into Africa. Jennings, who already has offices in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria wants to challenge China, the biggest foreign investor in the continent. Chinese President Hu Jintao vowed to boost investment and imports during a 12-day, eight-nation tour in February.

“`Africa is going through an enormous renaissance and unlike Russia in the 1990s, it’s not a matter of imagining that it might happen, it is happening,” Jennings said. “`With the exception of the Chinese, we will be one of the largest financial investors in the region. We have the ability and capacity to make quite big investments and bring in co- investors.”

For two more perspectives on the burgeoning ties between China and Africa, check out NPR’s take on the growing friendship.

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