Insparo Asset Management is celebrating the two year anniversary of its Africa and Middle East fund.
It says the success of the fund has shown the potential of investing in the region, and predicts that the next few years will provide even more growth.
The Insparo Africa & Middle East Fund makes investments across the Mena and Sub-Saharan Africa regions in various sectors. The fund has returned over 30 per cent since the start of July 2009, and has significantly outperformed the MSCI Frontier Markets Index over the same period.
The firm’s second year has seen it build on the success of its first. As well as the strong performance of its fund, which has grown to AUM of USD175m, Insparo doubled its headcount during the last year with its investment, operational, financial and marketing capabilities all being strengthened with key hires.
Latest figures from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, published at the start of July, predict GDP growth for 2011 at 4.9 per cent for Mena and 5.9 per cent for Sub-Sahara Africa. These make the region the world’s second fastest growing behind Asia, and Insparo believes that the amount of foreign investment the regions attract still does not come close to matching their growth potential.
Mohammed Hanif, chief investment officer, says: “The investment world is still very underweight Africa and the Middle East, yet our performance has shown the returns that are available from investing in these regions. Our opinion and the IMF’s outlooks have consistently supported this. The growth dynamic of these regions, coupled with dislocations in global markets, look likely to boost the returns available from a strategy such as ours even more in the future. Now is the time for investors to reconsider these areas.”
