MFW4A participated to the 15th edition of the AVCA Annual Conference in Morocco

Championing Private Investment in Africa

Marrakech, Morocco, 22-26 April 2018 — Each year, hundreds of private equity fund managers, chief executive officers, and financial sector specialists gather to identify challenges and share solutions at the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA) annual conference. Held this year in Marrakech and organized under the theme ‘Championing Private Investments in Africa,’ the 15th AVCA conference benefiting from the sponsorship of the African Development Bank (AfDB), and included a schedule replete with networking sessions, capacity building seminars, and a two-day workshop.

Despite recent political uncertainty, depreciating currencies, and the reduced growth of Africa’s largest economies, participants of the 2018 AVCA conference were almost unanimous in affirming the health of Africa’s private equity industry—in 2016 alone, private-equity players invested approximately $3.8 billion USD into the African region.

Representatives of the Making Finance Work for Africa (MFW4A) Partnership were in attendance to enhance its long-term finance development activities by identifying best practices, obstacles, and opportunities for collaboration with African private equity managers and institutional investors. On April 25 and 26, the MFW4A Secretariat actively participated in the ‘Institutional Investor Master Class,’ a closed-door capacity building session which aimed at equipping its participants with practical knowledge of the private equity asset class, in the African context.

The Secretariat facilitated the ‘Pension Fund Landscape in Africa’ session, designed to comprehensively explore the role of pension funds in private equity, and the barriers often faced by investors when interfacing with this class of assets. In view of the rapidly changing dynamics in the region—growing populations, increasing urbanization, rising per-capita incomes, and an expanding middle-class—private pension systems have been developed throughout Africa, and these new systems must understand the risks and opportunities associated with institutional investment.

Over the past 15 years, the AVCA conference has become one of the most important forums for stimulating private investment in Africa, and the MFW4A Partnership has leveraged the conference’s broad attendance to share its expertise and best practices with policymakers, regulators, and development partners from across the region. Just as the AVCA conference will continue to act as a rallying beacon for the industry, the Partnership will continue to devote itself to creating a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities of long-term finance across the continent.