The ‘scramble for Africa’ in the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw western colonial powers divide up territories on the continent with little understanding of practical realities on the ground.
In an 1890 speech, UK prime minister Lord Salisbury remarked that rival European interests “have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, but we have only been hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where those mountains and rivers and lakes were”.
For many western investors the continent is barely any better understood nowadays. Equity capital raised on African exchanges over the past quarter-century represented only 3 per cent of fundraising by emerging market companies, according to the OECD. International investor interest in Africa dropped off after 2014 as a commodities bear market emerged and much lower interest rates elsewhere attracted capital.
