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But as Africa’s economies grow and its nascent middle class starts spending into the trillions of dollars, and with the development of banking, insurance, construction, retail and more, it is time for catch-up. Some, though, simply cannot fathom the best route in, be it through stock markets, private equity or property.

"I don’t think much is missing other than time," Janusz Heath, MD of Capital Dynamics, a Swiss private equity group with more than $20bn under management, told a room of Africa private equity specialists gathered in Nairobi on Tuesday.

Richard Honey, investment principal at Investec Asset Management, which has $40bn invested in Africa, is a fan of the 1500 companies listed on the 20-odd stock exchanges on the continent as the best route in. The company has put $1,2bn into African stocks outside SA. "There is an investable universe out there," he told the SuperReturn Africa 2011 conference.

He leads the Zimbabwean Recapitalisation Strategy, which was launched this year. Thanks to a private family office, Investec had $20m to play with and was set on raising $80m-$100m to put into Zimbabwe, with up to 40% for its stock market. "We think we’ve got some potential in the underlying market. We see it as a special situation," he said.

For Okey Enelamah, CE of African Capital Alliance, private equity is the clear-cut winner. "The Africa story is a good story. Most of that growth is not listed; a lot of opportunities are outside the stock exchange." His fund had long quit 10 of its 11 initial investments, the other being still a good earner.

David Morley, head of real estate at Actis, pointed to the dearth of shopping malls across the continent. Actis, which has put close to $300m into African real estate outside SA, is investing in Ghana’s first "grade-A" office block, all sleek lines.

In Kenya, shopping malls are the name of the game. Actis has sold out of its $20m Junction mall, which houses everything from whiskey bars to sushi restaurants in one spot in Nairobi, for more than three times its initial investment. It is planning its third Kenyan real estate project, another mall on the Nairobi road out to Thika.

While India has 60 real estate investment funds, sub-Saharan Africa excluding SA has only three. It might not have much in the way of liquidity, but sub-Saharan investors see plenty of long-term growth on the go.

JSE investors have a choice of two recently launched exchange-traded notes offering baskets of African shares. The larger of the two is Deutsche Bank’s dbx-africa, which tracks the MSCI Africa capped-50 total return index. It is the JSE’s fifth-largest exchange-traded product with more than R1bn of assets under management. But its problem for investors in SA is that local companies make up 60% of its portfolio.

An alternative is Standard Bank’s Africa Equity exchange-traded note. It only has R156m assets under management, but the advantage for JSE investors wanting diversity is it excludes companies from SA, Lesotho and Swaziland. Its top holdings are Randgold Resources (4,5% of its basket), Zenith Bank (4%) and Paladin Energy (3,3%).