Entering Africa

It was six years ago this month that Twin Cities Business introduced regularly recurring coverage of the international business activities of Minnesota companies, most recently in our “Going Global” department. In that time, no country has been mentioned more often in our coverage than China, no continent less often than Africa.

In this issue, “Going Global” includes an interview with St. Louis Park tax attorney Henry Ongeri, the founder of the Pan-African Business Alliance, who laments the tendency of U.S. companies to overlook—for reasons you can begin to read about on page 144—opportunities to do business in Africa. Those opportunities have not been overlooked by business operators in other nations, especially not in China.

We tend to view Africa's 54 countries and 740 million people through a lens of poverty, instability, disease, illiteracy, and corruption. From 1996 through 2005, however, 19 African nations have averaged economic growth of more than 4.5 percent, five of them more than 7.5 percent.

I have been reading about Chinese involvement in Africa for the past several weeks, ever since learning that Steven Leuthold, one of Minnesota’s most celebrated investment advisors, placed 1 percent of his personal investment portfolio in a T. Rowe Price Africa & Middle East Fund (TRAMX). I’d recommend Africa in China’s Global Strategy, essays edited by Marcel Kitissou, who teaches at Cornell University’s Institute for African Development; Africa’s Silk Road, by Harry Broadman, regional vice president for Africa at the World Bank; and China in Africa, by Chris Alden of the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics.

We tend to view Africa’s 54 countries and 740 million people through a lens of poverty, instability, disease, illiteracy, and corruption. From 1996 through 2005, however, 19 African nations have averaged economic growth of more than 4.5 percent, five of them more than 7.5 percent. Chinese investors have discovered a continent offering untapped natural resources, new markets for consumer goods, reliable diplomatic partners, and—astoundingly—labor that can be purchased more cheaply than on the Chinese mainland.