Where to invest in Africa in the face of COVID-19 (African Business Magazine)

As Africa heads towards recession, it’s not easy to know where to invest. I highlighted three areas that are likely to fare better during the downturn in a recent article for African Business Magazine.

Back in January, Africa’s economic outlook for the year was bright. African Development Bank projections predicted 3.9% growth in 2020 and 4.1% in 2021. But then, coronavirus upended the global economy.

Less than two months later, with only 61 confirmed Covid-19 cases in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) revised the continent’s growth projections downwards to 2%. Last week, The World Bank said that Africa is headed towards its first recession in 25 years.. These gloomy figures can largely be attributed to disrupted value chains, reduction in FDI and remittances, and direct hits to sectors such as tourism and oil.

 While no industry can truly be recession-proof, tech-enabled sectors may be more likely to withstand these shocks. Digital technology is getting a boost as people find new ways to work and communicate and sectors take their services online. Read on here.

10 African companies helping stop the spread of COVID-19

Coronavirus case counts are rising rapidly in Africa. At the time of writing, more than 11,400 cases and 574 deaths have been confirmed. According to Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, “COVID-19 has the potential not only to cause thousands of deaths, but to also unleash economic and social devastation.” From access to quality care to the availability of ventilators and testing, African countries face a unique challenge in fighting this pandemic. As public health officials ramp up prevention efforts while bracing for the worst, the region’s private sector is stepping up to the plate.

I shared a list of some innovative African companies giving back to their communities to help stop the spread for Botho Emerging Markets Group, where I’m Esther Ocloo Fellow.

Op-Ed: How emerging markets will shape Africa in 2020 (World Economic Forum)

In recent years, Sub-Saharan Africa has increasingly traded old friends, like the US and the European Union, for new ones in emerging markets. Since 2006, the region’s exports to the US have declined by 66%, while exports to countries such as Russia and Turkey have doubled and tripled respectively.

This shift in partnerships comes as Africa embarks on a new era buoyed by the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the landmark free trade agreement that will become operational in 2020, as well as increased visa openness and harmonization of monetary policy through West Africa’s new Eco currency. African countries can and should start this decade by taking advantage of this progress to shift from reactive to proactive diplomacy by building new ties with vital emerging markets. Instead of a 21st-century scramble, for Africa, 2020 marks the beginning of 21st-century partnerships.

In this piece for the World Economic Forum, I cover how:

• African countries are building new ties with emerging markets;

• These alliances will be critical in 2020 against a backdrop of US-China trade tensions and policy uncertainty in the UK owing to Brexit;

• In addition to China, India, Russia and the UAE are emerging as strong investment and trading partners that will shape Africa's economy.

Tech London Advocates Feature

Tech London Advocates, a community of black women Tech advocates in London, works to support and empower diversity and inclusion of black women in tech. I was honored to be featured in their most recent spotlight. Read the full interview here, and catch some highlights below.

What are your business and lifestyle rituals to stay ahead?

Center the practice of curiosity to design a career that is not only unique and meaningful but also reduces your blind spots. When you rely on patterns, it can be easy to default to what you know and stop innovating. By remaining curious, you expose yourself to new data or different points of view which can enrich your perspective.

SheDistinction Interview (Sept. 2019)

Many thanks to Vera Ng’oma, who interviewed me for SheDistinction, a platform to inspire and enable young women learn to lead and flourish professional. Full interview available here and some highlights below:

Most people associate marketing and communications with products/private sector but you use it for social impact. How does that work in practice?   

91% of global consumers expect companies to do more than make a profit but also operate responsibly to address social and environmental issues. But how do they hear about it? That’s where marketing and communications come in — storytelling is a fundamental part of social impact. Successful stakeholder engagement requires communicating what you as an organization have been doing to both internal and external stakeholders such as employees, policymakers, and customers. Brand storytelling is multi-layered. From messages from marketing to product innovation and customer interaction, it’s critical to tell genuine stories that are anchored around messages of community. For that story to resonate, the tone can’t be too promotional or self-congratulatory — it has to be honest, balanced, and most critically, transparent. 

You work across business, culture, politics, etc with quite a wide range of stakeholders. What’s your ‘success-kit’ for working with groupings as diverse as for example farmers on the one hand and multinationals on the other?

Learning how to communicate with different cultures and personalities can go a long way not just in the workplace but outside it, too. In a multicultural, global society, code-switching is becoming a more regular occurrence. But to do this genuinely and credibly, it’s important to take time to understand the culture you are operating in — from history to etiquette, and more. Remember that people appreciate the details, and respectful curiosity about another person’s culture not only demonstrates your commitment to learning about their working environment and cultural context but it can also be a great icebreaker!

Op-Ed: Getting African Women into the Boardroom (Project Syndicate / World Economic Forum / Arab News)

In recent years, African women have made great strides in getting their voices heard in politics and government. It is time for businesses within the region and around the world to embrace this trend and bring more African women into their executive teams and their boardrooms. In this piece co-written with Marcia Ashong, I look at how businesses might make more strides in getting more African women into the boardroom. It was originally published by Project Syndicate, and re-published in the World Economic Forum Agenda and Arab News, Saudi Arabia’s largest English-language daily.

By 2050, one-quarter of the world’s population will be African, which means that one in eight people will be an African woman. Yet, within the continent, let alone internationally, Africa’s women lack the economic clout their numbers might suggest. That disconnect has severe adverse implications for Africa’s prospects. In fact, the only way to tap Africa’s full potential is by dramatically improving women’s representation in the workplace, including in senior executive roles.

The contribution women can make to Africa’s future should be obvious. Worldwide, consumer spending – which is growing three times faster in emerging markets than in developed economies – is largely controlled by women. This implies a powerful incentive for companies to bring more women into their decision-making processes.

Yet, even as the number of women sitting on the boards of global companies rises, progress is slow, and African women have been largely left out – with notable exceptions, such as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance minister and World Bank managing director, who was appointed to the board of Twitter last year, undoubtedly because of the platform’s growing popularity in Africa. But Okonjo-Iweala is an outlier – few African women hold similarly influential positions at global corporations.

African women are barely present even in boardrooms within Africa, where 95% of CEOs are men. According to datafrom the African Development Bank, women hold only 12.7% of the board seats in Africa’s top listed companies.

This reflects a broader lack of gender equality across the African private sector that is preventing the continent’s economies from reaching their full potential. New research from the International Monetary Fund shows that countries ranked in the bottom 50% for gender equality globally – including large African economies like Ethiopia, Morocco, and Nigeria – could add a whopping 35% to their economies, on average, by bringing more women into the workplace. Having more women in senior leadership roles is critical to catalyzing a shift, given the powerful role that diversity at the top plays in shaping organizational priorities. As Africa is already home to six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies, achieving gender balance in the workplace could deliver a significant boost to global growth.

Read more here.