There are many misconceptions about Africa and African investing. One of the more common remarks we hear when introducing Africa to potential investors is: "I know this is a high-risk investment with a high potential return." If we use the MSCI index for Africa excluding SA and compare the returns and volatility of this index to a range of other global indices, we can see this is simply not true. Looking at data from June 2 2002 (the earliest available for Africa ex-SA) to April 30 2018, African equity markets, excluding South African, have outperformed developed, emerging, frontier markets and the S&P 500 index. In addition, the volatility of these returns has been similar to those for developed markets and even less than that of emerging markets. This data clearly dispels the myth that investing in African equities can be associated with higher volatility, even if the returns are better. Our data also shows that an active manager investing in these markets can generate between 3% ...
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