Bagader Trading
Tyres, tubes and batteries. Largest stockist of Chinese, Indian and Indonesian Tyres, Korean Tubes and Batteries and a leading exporter of tyres to Africa from Dubai...
Oil rich countries in the Middle East countries has resulted in Arab investors spreading
their investments to north and sub- Saharan Africa in
search of the high returns that are becoming harder to find in saturated western
markets.
With banks and financial institutions in the Arabian Gulf with disposable liquidity,
Middle investors are keen to expand their
investments into new markets. Consequently, there have been many
joint ventures, mergers,
acquisitions and reverse takeovers in Africa that are backed by capital surpluses and
local and international loans secured by land holdings in the Gulf.
“Many of these companies are generating very high cash returns,” says Walid
Shiabi, head researcher at the
Dubai-based Shuaa Capital. “And in a lot of cases, they are beginning to outgrow
their own markets and are looking elsewhere to expand.”
The rapid growth of Middle Eastern economies has provided investors an opportunity to
reduce their exposure to domestic
markets by expanding into the African markets and beyond. Many deals in the African
property and telecoms sectors have
dominated the news in recent years. However, there has also been substantial expansion
into other sectors in African countries like
hotels, supermarket chains, airlines, transport logistics and commercial and investment
banks.
Rapid growth in the South African tourist sector attracted International Financial
Advisors (IFA), a Dubai-listed property group, to
buy a 50 per cent stake in the Zimbali Coastal Resort on KwaZulu-Natal’s north
coast, with a plan to invest $100 million
over ten years – one of the biggest tourism investments ever undertaken in the
southern African region. The deal
followed hot on the heels of IFA’s acquisition of the Zanzibar Beach Hotel for $50
million, as part of the company’s long-term
strategy of building up its African holdings.
“This is a substantial commitment for us,” said Phil de Sylva, Vice
President of Acquisitions for IFA Hotels & Resorts. “Our
development plans are very ambitious. Building 2,500 residential units, hotels and golf
courses is a huge undertaking. But the investment in
Zimbali has so far been a phenomenal success.
“There have been difficulties. Dealing with South African labour laws and black
empowerment legislation can be a challenge for an offshore
company. But it is just something you have to learn to deal with. The company is on a
very aggressive acquisition path. We are already looking at
three or four other potential acquisitions and there is no limit to the amount of
investment we are prepared to make in the country.”
IFA Hotels & Resorts has also announced a 209 per
cent increase
in profits. It has since bought an 80 per cent stake in Yotel, a luxury small-room hotel
concept due to open at London’s Heathrow
and Gatwick airports. Talal Jassim al-Bahar, the groups Director, now wants to bring the
idea to Africa. “Our expectation is
big in South Africa,” he said. “I think we’ll be one of the biggest
real estate companies in the country. It’s
an untapped region.”
The announcement by Istithmar, the Dubai-based investment holding company, and London
& Regional Properties, the
UK investment group, that it had bought Cape Town’s prestigious V&A Waterfront
for R7.04 billion ($910 million), suggests that
other Middle East investors are thinking along similar lines.
In one of the biggest property deals ever undertaken in North Africa, Emaar Properties,
the world’s richest real estate firm,
and Dubai Holdings, the state-owned enterprise, both based in the United Arab Emirates,
unveiled a $9 billion scheme to transform the Moroccan
tourist industry with a series of tourist destination and residential investment
developments in Rabat,
Marrakesh, Casablanca and Tangiers.
Nasser Mohammed Al Kharafi, the Chairman of the Al-Kharafi Group, the Kuwaiti-based
construction company, is the master developer
for the multi-billion dollar Port Ghalib scheme on the Egyptian Red Sea, which will see
the development of an 18 kilometres stretch of
coastline.
On the other hand, Emaar Properties is building the $4 billion Uptown Cairo project
– a 1,544-acre tourist development with 3,000
hotel rooms. It has also recently won a $175m land auction to build two five-star
hotels, a marina, golf course and shopping centre
at Al Alamein on the Egyptian Mediterranean coast.
“As an emerging market with strong fundamentals, Egypt is of key importance to
Emaar Properties in building the company’s international
portfolio,” says Nader Mohammed, Emaar Managing Director. “This reflects
Emaar’s commitment to becoming one of
the world’s most valuable companies.”
The new wave of Arab investment is accelerating the notion of a single African market
that might otherwise have taken much longer
to develop. Few of these pioneers have been more emphatic about creating a
‘continental brand’ than Celtel, the
Netherlands-based mobile phone operator bought by Kuwait’s Mobile
Telecommunications Company (MTC) for $3.4 billion.
“Building a pan-African brand lies at the core of our corporate strategy,”
says Marten Pieters, Celtel’s CEO. “Africa’s
borders are colonial, they do not reflect economic or linguistic relations, so there is
a lot of inter-country traffic, and that is where the opportunities lie.
“Calls between Kinshasa and Brazzaville are still routed via Europe. We think that
there is a big opportunity to build a genuinely African
communications system, so we are focusing on establishing cross-border links, which is
why we offer subscribers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania discount
rates from normal international tariffs.”
MTC’s Kuwaiti shareholders have deep pockets. The company, which has a presence in
15 African countries, poured $750 million
into Tanzania alone. It is currently
spending a similar amount boosting the capacity of its Nigerian subsidiary, and is
looking for further expansion
opportunities in Senegal, Ghana, Angola and Ethiopia.
“There is no doubt in our minds that Nigeria will be a big growth
area,” says Pieters. Most telecom analysts agree. Many African markets have less
than ten per cent mobile penetration, and many of them are forecast
to double by the end of the decade – especially if the investment needed to boost
oversubscribed capacity materialises.
Likewise, MTN, the Kuwaiti-owned mobile provider that began operations in South Africa
in 1994, has been expanding across Africa
and beyond. It paid a whopping $5.5 billion for Lebanon’s Investcom, making it the
largest mobile phone operator in the
Middle East and Africa region, and recently merged with Yemen’s Spacetel, boosting
its subscribers to 30 million. MTN has
courted controversy by expanding into countries with a high-risk profile. Through
Investcom it has franchises in Syria, Afghanistan
and Sudan. Now it is targeting Iran.
But Phuthuma Nhleko, MTN’s CEO, is confident that the risks of operating in some
of the world’s toughest business
environments are outweighed by the potential for growth. He insists that MTN proved the
skeptics wrong by investing in Nigeria,
which is now the company’s second largest earner after South Africa.
MTN is not alone in making pioneering forays into Iran and other ‘volatile
markets’. PetroSA, Sasol, Mintek,
Bateman Engineering and Standard Bank have also followed suit. Ironically, the collapse
of the Doha Round of trade liberalisation
talks appears to have given impetus to the trend towards greater economic ties between
Africa and the Middle East.
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