South Africa’s largest mobile phone operator Vodacom has teamed up with Nedbank to unveil an M-Pesa mobile-based cash transfer service, similar to the successful on operating in Kenya.

The service was developed by Britain’s Vodafone, the majority shareholder in Vodacom, and part owner of Kenya’s Safaricom.

The product – available in Tanzania and Afghanistan – allows users to transfer money from person to person using a mobile phone.

It will initially allow users without access to bank accounts to transfer money using handsets and eventually pay bills and buy goods.

Vodacom plans to replicate M-Pesa’s success in Kenya to the continent’s richest country in a move targeting about 13 million unbanked South Africans.

In Kenya, M-Pesa as a value added service has helped Safaricom to increase its market share from about 60 per cent three years ago to over 80 per cent.

Mr Mark Taylor, the newly appointed MD of Vodacom Payment Services, the company that houses M-Pesa offering hopes to emulate those market share gains in SA.

“There are other cellphone banking products and money transfer services out there, but there quite simply is nothing like M-PESA.

‘‘The beauty of this service is the ease and speed with which people can send money to each other anywhere in the country,” said Mr Pieter Uys, Vodacom Group CEO in a statement.

Vodacom’s commercial director Romeo Kumalo says the telecom’s target is to sign up 10 million customers within three years.

“If we get to 10 million users, that gives us more than 50 per cent of our subscriber base,” says Mr Taylor. “Then we will start to build enough traction that people will churn to us.”

In Kenya and Tanzania M-Pesa has been extended to allow customers to pay for school fees, insurance premiums and to put money into savings accounts.

“In South Africa, cell phone penetration is extremely high, and yet it is estimated that more than 13 million economically active South Africans do not have a bank account,” said Mr Mike Brown, Nedbanks’ chief executive.

Customers there can also receive payments such as salaries and dividends.

In July alone, about 1.7 million new M-Pesa subscriptions in Kenya were recorded.

According to the latest figures from Safaricom, the number of clients on M-Pesa has grown by 61 per cent from 7.38 million as of July 2010 to 11.89 million the same period last year.

Up to the end of last month, the service had transferred Sh525.84 billion since its inception in 2007 and the monthly average of money moved through the system has increased by 30 per cent.

Importing innovations

The service facilitated the transfer of Sh33 billion last month, compared to Sh20 billion in July last year. There were 19,500 agents as at the month of July.

While in the country recently, the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale said that her country will leverage its technology by importing innovations from Africa as part of the Obama Administration’s bid to strengthen relations with the continent.

Citing the M-Pesa evolution, Ms McHale said her country’s economy could benefit by importing the revolutionary mobile money transfer system from Kenya.

Source:
Daily Nation

The newly commissioned Lekki free trade zone in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos

The $5 billion first phase of the Lekki Free Zone, a 3,000 hectare site on the eastern fringe of the city, is 60 percent held by Chinese investors and 40 percent by the Lagos state government, the deputy head of the project told Reuters.

The consortium will provide basic infrastructure including roads, power plants and water plants before manufacturing firms are invited to set up business, Lekki Free Zone Development Co (LFZDC) deputy managing director Adeyemo Thompson said.

“We have a number of Chinese companies which are coming in the manufacturing area,” Thompson said in an interview.

“They are coming to produce furniture, electronics, pharmaceuticals and heavy machinery. We are having a fair in November, that is when we kick off operations.”

The Chinese shareholders in the project include China Railway Construction Corp., the China-Africa Development Fund Ltd and the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation Ltd.

A total of 16,500 hectares of land bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Lagos and Lekki lagoons has been earmarked for the whole free zone, which will include a deepwater sea port and a new international airport in close proximity.

The aim of the free zone is to make it easier for foreign investors, particularly manufacturers, to build a foothold in sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous nation and second-biggest economy while still owning 100 percent of their firms.

It is modelled on free zones around China which have helped the Asian giant to develop its manufacturing base and economy over the past three decades.

“We have a one-stop shop … No investor has to deal with any government agency directly. We license the enterprises. You can register your enterprise within a week, get permits and everything you need to run your business,” Thompson said.

“The free zone allows you to attract foreign direct investment into the country and investors are given some incentives … It helps boost production, manufacturing, create employment and is a basis for sustainable infrastructure.”

The manufacturing and agricultural sectors have been neglected since the 1970s oil boom, when Nigeria began making easy money from crude oil sales. Oil accounts for more than 80 percent of revenues and more than 60 percent of exports.

Nigeria imports everything from toothpicks to cement, with a growing proportion of the goods coming from China. The Lekki Free Zone will enable Chinese and other manufacturers to test their products on Africa’s largest potential consumer market.

“There is a huge market in waiting,” Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola said at an opening ceremony this month.

“When you look at how much our people spend importing goods from abroad, how much they pay in excess baggage at major airports, bringing this here is like bringing home prosperity.”

The vast majority of Nigeria’s 140 million people live on less than $2 a day but economists say a growing middle class means a consumer market is developing that could help its economy surpass South Africa’s in the coming years.

The West African head of private equity firm Actis estimated earlier this year that some 10 million people had moved from low income towards the middle income bracket in Nigeria in the past five years alone.

Thompson said China was encouraging manufacturers whose Western export markets had suffered in the global downturn to explore frontier destinations such as those in Africa.

The administrative complex housing Thompson’s office, customs and company registration officials, and a few warehouses are so far the only buildings to have been completed.

The architect’s models show glistening glass and steel warehouses around a central lagoon, and the ultimate aim is to build a mini-city which will house more than 180,000 people.

Sceptics point to the lacklustre interest in some other free zones around Nigeria, particularly the $300 million Tinapa resort in the southeastern state of Cross Rivers, envisaged as a tourist resort and duty-free shopping paradise.

Its launch two years ago was marred by armed customs officers trying to impound products bought by its customers.

But Lekki’s investors say the two are incomparable.

The new zone is adjacent to Nigeria’s most populous city, Chinese investors own a majority stake, no commercial loans are involved, and manufacturing – not tourism – is at its heart.

“The choice of China as partner is because in recent times they have had experience of transforming an unrated nation into a world class nation,” Thompson said.

Reuters

It all has to do with their coverage of the August 4 constitution referendum vote.

It was an African referendum, and in Kenya where, after the December 2007 election dispute, the country plunged into murderous violence.

The charge is that the foreign press waited for the machetes to come out, and when they didn’t, they didn’t treat the “historic” vote with the respect it deserved.

It is true that the majority of international observers and foreign journalists who were in Kenya congregated in the Rift Valley, where some could have expected, as one European newspaper put it in 2008, “Kalenjin natives of the area [to] murder the local Kikuyu tribesmen.”

In the event, the real story was happening in Nairobi at the tallying centre of the Interim Independent Electoral Commission.

Kenya’s IIEC easily pulled off one of the most efficient voting operations in the world.

Thanks to smart deployment of new technologies, the first result, according to a good source, was received in Nairobi exactly minutes after polling closed at 5pm.

By 8pm, exactly three hours after polls closed, the IIEC had received a record 87 per cent of the results.

Then it faced a pleasantly strange problem; it had been too efficient, and now it had more data than it could process!

We stayed up through to 7am, and I had dozens of “international” news sites open on my computer. It was amazing.

Even a British outlet with a strong African presence went nearly 10 hours after the polls closed before it did an update — it was waiting for the bloodletting that never came.

I am a big fan of the foreign press. In the bad days, they were the only source of information on the nasty things happening in Africa.

They reported the carnage of wars, ravages of famines, and the brutalities of military and one-party African regimes when there were hardly any independent newspapers and broadcasters to tell these stories.

However the spread of democracy, free markets, the Internet, mobile phones and other vehicles of globalisation have changed the game.

Those who want “negative” images of Africa – the alleged cannibalism, African porn, witchcraft, corruption, mob lynchings, squalor, and tribal rage gone amok — no longer have to look for it in the Western media.

The African media do it better than anyone else. If you want the good stuff, there’s is no shortage of African sources for that too.

Every nation needs an external eye to draw its attention to flaws that it cannot see.

Africa can collectively use a lot of that right now, because the continent is changing and throwing up a lot of complexities.

This requires financial resources and the type of clever correspondents most struggling Western media can no longer afford.

However, part of it doesn’t require money.

Just a shrewd editor to wake up, smell the coffee, and realise that while most votes in Africa are stolen, occasionally some get away clean.

However, even with more sophisticated coverage, my sense is that traditional-style Western foreign correspondent is mostly irrelevant today, and will soon be dead altogether.

Source:
East African

The simmering battle between Uganda and exploration companies over oil revenues boiled over last week with Irish firm Tullow Oil losing its rights to the 400 million-barrel Kingfisher well.

The development comes just weeks after Tullow paid its partner in the blocks, Heritage Oil, nearly $1.5 billion for its stake — a move industry analysts had already described as reckless.

Citing section 20 (1) and (2) of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Act Cap150, Energy Minister Hillary Onek told Tullow and Heritage that the period within which they should have applied for a Petroleum Production Licence for the Kingfisher field expired in February 2010.

“In accordance with the powers entrusted in the Minister under Section 19 (1b) of the Act, I hereby direct that the Kingfisher (Kajuburizi) Discovery Area has ceased to form part of the Petroleum Exploration Area 3A (EA-3A) under the Petroleum Exploration Licence granted to you on September 8, 2004.

“You are therefore either jointly or severally to cease carrying out any activities under the Discovery Area,” the minister says in an August 17 letter to the two companies.

While Heritage may be home and dry as its shareholders share out part of the proceeds from its $1.45 billion exit from Uganda, its erstwhile partner Tullow, which has spent some $3.1 billion in acquisitions and operations in Uganda, has been left severely exposed.

The EastAfrican has learnt that, against conventional wisdom, Tullow rushed to pay its partner the full exit costs, even before the deal had secured full approval from the Ugandan government over a pending tax dispute.

Uganda had refused to clear the deal until Heritage paid $408 million in capital gains tax. As the deadline for expiry of Tullow’s pre-emption rights loomed in early July, the government relented, giving conditional approval to the deal after Heritage offered to pay 30 per cent of the dispute sum — $121 million — to the Uganda Revenue Authority, with the rest to be deposited in an escrow account pending the outcome of arbitration proceedings in London.

However, Tullow proceeded to pay the remaining $287 million into an account with Standard Charted in London, effectively putting the money out of reach of Uganda regardless of the outcome of the arbitration.

This angered Ugandan officials, setting off a counterattack that culminated in their invoking the law against Tullow.

Speaking to The EastAfrican about the tax dispute last week, Mr Onek said the Production Sharing Agreements signed with the firms were clear that tax disputes would be referred to Ugandan law.

“There is a whole page about tax in the Production Sharing Agreements, which puts tax disputes under Ugandan law and only other issues are subject to arbitration in London. There is also provision for a tax tribunal under Ugandan law to which Heritage should take their dispute. The remaining 70 per cent of the dispute sum should have been deposited in a Ugandan bank, not Standard Charted London.

“We therefore consider the agreement under which Conditional Approval was granted invalid until all the conditions for conditional consent are fulfilled,” Mr Onek said, adding that Uganda would not continue dealing with a “dishonest company.” “There are many other companies willing to come in,” he said.

Tullow is now carrying the cross all by itself having paid Heritage the full price of its exit from Uganda. While Heritage had earlier agreed to exchange $150 million of its dues for interests in any other field held by Tullow, sensing what was coming, they upped the game and got $100 million in cash instead.

This is part of the money they used to deposit the $121 million with the URA, effectively leaving them in a position to deliver the $1.35 billion they had promised their shareholders.

The EastAfrican has learnt that Tullow was desperate to close the deal because it had not been completely honest with its shareholders. For months, it had been making positive statements about the Ugandan business, which pumped up its share price on the London Stock Exchange.

Such misrepresentations included data on oil finds that included finds by Heritage, which at the time did not belong to Tullow. A collapse of the transfer deal would expose this, threatening the $3.1 billion that has so far been spent by the company in Uganda.

Tullow’s $3.1 billion exposure in Uganda is made up as follows: The $1.1 billion Hardman buyout, $500 million exploration of block 2 and the $1.45 billion Heritage buyout. Block 3A expires on September 7 while Block 1 expires next year.

Questions are also emerging on how Tullow racked up such huge costs for its operations in Uganda.
While Heritage spent $150 million to explore 6,279 square kilometers, Tullow claims to have spent $500 million on a much smaller area.

Unless there are demonstrable geological differences to justify the costs, something is not right with Tullow’s costs, which are deductible from sales.

Source:
The East African

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Answer: You’re always at a disadvantage when dealing with the venture capital community, since their experience almost certainly outweighs yours. But there are ways to can go into the negotiations prepared. Here are five quick things that startup owners often get wrong:

Cold Calls.  One of the classic rookie mistakes is cold-calling or emailing a VC you don’t know personally. In short, you’re wasting your time.  The best way to get a meeting with a VC is through a “warm” introduction – that is, an introductory phone call or email from a middleman (or woman) whom the VC respects and trusts.

The ideal middleman is a successful entrepreneur whom the VC has backed; other investors can be good middlemen – and lawyers or accountants may also be helpful.

Homework.  Startups often make the mistake of not doing their homework when talking with VC firms.  Even before you get an introduction, do some research and figure-out which VC firms are a good fit for your startup. This can be based on a number of different factors, including their space/industry focus, their investment criteria, their fund size, their geographic focus, their “sweet spot” and their track record.

It’s also wise to learn as much as you can about the particular partners with whom you are interested in working, including determining their reputation, character, domain expertise and capacity to take-on a new deal.

NDAs.  Rookies often ask a VC to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (“NDA”). It ain’t gonna happen.

VC’s are inundated with business plans and executive summaries and are constantly talking to entrepreneurs whose ideas may be similar to yours.  There is no way a VC is going to risk getting sued as a result of funding a startup with a similar idea or business plan to yours.   Moreover, they would need to hire a lawyer to review and negotiate NDA’s – which from their perspective is a waste of time and money.  To the extent you have any “secret sauce” or proprietary technology that you’re concerned about disclosing, you should just not share it with the VC.

Valuation.  Startups often focus too much on valuation.  Obviously, the pre-money valuation (or “pre” as it is commonly referred to) of the company is an important deal term. However, inexperienced startups make the mistake of obsessing over pre – and will often a sign a term sheet with the VC firm that gives them the highest pre.

This is the wrong approach for two significant reasons. First, there are other important terms that affect the economics of a financing, including the size of the option pool and the liquidation preference. Also, a top-notch VC firm (like a Sequoia) can add extraordinary value to a venture.  Thus, even if those firms come in with a lower pre than another VC, a smaller piece of a huge pie is better than a bigger piece of a little pie.

Negotiations.  Rookies often make the mistake of trying to negotiate VC term sheets (or some of the key investment terms) without having spent the time to fully understand them and/or retaining strong, experienced counsel. Term sheets are complex and a potential minefield for first-time entrepreneurs. Moreover, VCs spend their careers negotiating term sheets and know every term (including every nuance) inside out.

Accordingly, startups need to be smart (and demonstrate a certain level of credibility with the VCs) by getting a good corporate lawyer involved early on, among other things, to coach and prepare them for their preliminary negotiations with the VCs.

Source:
Venture Beat

Forget the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Larry Seruma, chief investment officer of Nile Capital Management, says many retail investors are missing a tremendous opportunity for growth in Africa. Seruma manages the Nile Pan Africa fund, the first actively managed, U.S.-based mutual fund to focus exclusively on Africa. He recently released a report, which can be seen here, that explains his investment firm’s reasons for investing in the continent.

Seruma says more investors will begin to look outside of developed markets like the United States for growth, because those markets aren’t expected to grow as fast as they have in the past. “It’s only much more recently you’re beginning to see these huge disparities coalesce,” he says. “The U.S. is going to have very low investment opportunities going forward.”

[See U.S. News's Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]

Investing in Africa involves plenty of risks. The biggest, Seruma says, is liquidity. “Liquidity is really the ability to trade frequently,” he says. “When you want to get out of a position, it’s not easy to get out of a position.” Executing trades can be difficult because some African stock markets aren’t as transparent and not as much trading takes place compared with, say, the S&P 500. There are other concerns, including the threat of government and corporate corruption. Many African countries have become functioning democracies, however, according to Seruma.

There are a number of other funds that give investors access to Africa and other “frontier” markets, which are also sometimes called pre-emerging markets. Templeton Frontier Markets and iShares MSCI South Africa Index ETF are two examples. Out of the 53 countries in Africa, Seruma’s fund currently invests in 14, which together account for about 90 percent of Africa’s overall market capitalization. Here are Seruma’s reasons for investing in Africa.

‘Ground-floor opportunity.’ Seruma says many investors have already missed what he calls a “ground-floor opportunity” in Africa. For the decade ending Dec. 31, 2009, an African composite index made up of eight countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt, returned about 14 percent annualized. South Africa alone returned an average of 13 percent per year over that period. Compare that with the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which returned about 7 percent annualized, or the S&P 500, which lost about 3 percent over the same time period. He compares the risk versus return ratio in Africa today with emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil in the late 1900s—meaning that investors who enter a new high-growth market first reap the highest returns over time because they’re willing to take on more risk.

[See The Opportunity in Africa.]

Low correlation. Correlation is a measure of how investments perform in relation to each other. A low correlation, for example, means that two securities will frequently move in opposite directions. According to Seruma’s research, from January 2002 through June 2009, an African composite index of eight countries had a correlation of 0.59 with the S&P 500, 0.66 with the MSCI EAFE Index (which measures developed markets outside of North America), and 0.60 with the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. That means that 59 percent of the time, the returns of the African index differed from those of the S&P 500. Investors can use correlation statistics to find out how to better diversify their portfolios. “The African markets have a very low correlation with domestic or other emerging markets, so [you have a] good opportunity to actually reduce risk in the overall portfolio,” he says. Diversifying your portfolio among uncorrelated assets can help offset big losses.

[See Why Emerging Markets Belong in Your Portfolio.]

Strong growth expected. According to projections from the World Bank, nine of the 15 countries in the world with the highest rate of five-year economic growth are in Africa. Seruma estimates that Africa is likely to grow by 4.7 percent over the next five years. Economists expect much slower growth in places like the United States and U.K. over the next few years. “It’s a pretty huge growth differential,” he says.

Profitable companies. There are a number of well-known companies that are based in Africa, including South African Breweries (a subsidiary of SABMiller) and telecom company MTN. Africa’s total stock market capitalization now exceeds $1 trillion. A recent study by two economists, Paul Collier and Jean-Louis Warnholz, found that from 2002 to 2007, the average annual return on capital of African companies was 65 percent to 70 percent higher than that of comparable companies in China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. That means the African companies were more profitable.

[See 7 Great Dividend Funds.]

Demand for commodities. “It’s mainly driven by [the] BRICs,” Seruma says. “As they industrialize, they’re going to be demanding more and more of these commodities.” For instance, 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 40 percent of the world’s proven gold reserves are found in Africa, according to Seruma.

Increasingly less violent. According to Freedom House, 63 percent of Africa’s population now lives in countries designated “free or partially free.” Compare that with Asia, which has a score of 66 percent. Seruma says most African countries now have functioning democracies. “It’s a very different picture from what it was 20 years ago, and that has increased investment,” he says.

China’s involvement in the region. Seruma singles out China because many Chinese companies—some of which are backed by the government—have made significant investments in Africa. “They are really taking a long-term view about investing in Africa,” he says. The governments of countries like China have realized that they’re going to need resources from the African continent to fund their growth and consumption in the future, Seruma says.

[See 3 Ways to Invest in China's Powerhouse Economy.]

Infrastructure spending. Countries are no longer coming to Africa solely to extract resources. They’re beginning to stay and help make important infrastructure improvements in the country, Seruma says. “The old story of investment in Africa was ‘let us get the natural resources out of the ground and immediately ship it out,’” Seruma says. “Now it’s changing. Not only do they go to Africa and make an investment in Africa, but they’re also making the additional development projects.” For instance, diamond giant De Beers recently signed a deal to mine diamonds in Botswana, including a commitment to build a diamond sorting facility.

Low debt. Concerns about sovereign debt—the debt that governments owe—has made headlines in Europe. Countries like Greece, Portugal, and most recently, Ireland have seen their debt downgraded by ratings agencies like Standard & Poor’s. The United States also faces a huge budget deficit. Seruma says he believes that the United States will see five or six more years of low interest rates, which will lead many investors to look to different regions of the world for higher yield. “The capital being pushed out of the developed markets is going to benefit Africa,” he says. “We believe this time around, there is some sustainability in terms of capital flows.” Many African countries don’t have the same worries. Seruma cites Nigeria, which has a debt-to-GDP ratio of only 18 percent, compared with countries like Greece and Japan whose debt-to-GDP ratio is more than 100 percent.

[See 10 Ways the European Debt Crisis Affects Your Investments.]

Growing investment from abroad. Seruma also cites a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report, which shows that capital flows to Africa are higher than three of the four BRIC countries. Africa is ahead of Brazil, India, and Russia. It’s second only to China.

Attractive valuations. Seruma believes that many African countries are currently trading at attractive valuations. He says the average price-to-earnings ratio for African companies is about 8 to 9 percent compared with the S&P 500, which has an average P/E ratio of about 15 or 16 percent. “There’s a huge valuation differential that is not explained by the risk,” he says.

Young demographics. Compared with other regions of the world, Africa has a much younger median age, which means African governments aren’t as burdened by elderly populations and pension plans. It also means that Africa has a young, vibrant workforce, Seruma says. Africa’s most populous nation is Nigeria, which Seruma accounts for about a quarter of Africa’s total population. Nigeria’s median age is 19 years old. Compare that with 37 in the United States, 40 in the U.K., and 45 in Japan.

Source
US News Money