2019 Report on Investment Attractiveness Rankings for Africa, and the new Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility is launched

Rand Merchant Bank has released the eighth edition of its “Where to invest in Africa” report, which analyzes 53 African economies according to their investment attractiveness. The theme of this year’s report is infrastructure, one of the most important aspects of doing business on the continent. As the Report points out, The ten most attractive countries for investment are: Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire in that order.

Meanwhile, the African Development Bank and its partners have launched the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), designed to aid safety and expansion of digital financial transactions in Africa. The Fund, launched at the Bank’s Annual Meetings in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the Government of Luxembourg, as initial contributors. Bank Vice President Pierre Guislain, Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization, said the goal is to ensure that at least 320 million more Africans, of which nearly 60% would be women, have access to digital financial services. The fund will deploy $100 million in grants and $300 million in the form of debt from the Bank’s ordinary capital resources by 2030, to scale up electronic financial services for low-income communities. The interventions will be aligned to 4 pillars; infrastructure (including digital and interoperable payment systems); digital products and innovation; policy and regulatory reform (including harmonization of legislation); and capacity building.