Verdant Capital successfully held its inaugural Video Africa virtual investor conference on May 5-7. Over the three days, more than 150 one-on-one meetings were held with over 50 leading relevant investors and eight of our selected clients with operations in seven countries across Africa, ranging from microfinance banks to credit-only institutions and “fintechs”. For the foreseeable future, logistical challenges, especially around travel, will impact how cross-border investment flows are negotiated and diligenced. Video Africa plays an important role in stimulating access to finance for these types of institutions working within the parameters of the “new normal”. Such funding is important now […]
A combination of factors in the current environment is challenging the economic sustainability of businesses and financial institutions large and small across Africa. Globally, the COVID-19 crisis and associated lockdowns had the effect of “calling the end of a long bull market” since the credit crisis in 2008. In most African markets, the bull market had already ended some years before the pandemic. In Africa, the pandemic has compounded the difficulties presented by weaker commodity prices, sovereign credit challenges, volatile exchanges rates and uncertain public policy regimes. From an investment perspective, there has been an increasingly “risk-off” investor approach to […]
Ghana has been taking steps to sustain its economy amidst the coronavirus pandemic and related lock-downs and has started multiple initiatives. African countries, in general, have taken a hard knock from the impact of the pandemic and most countries remain in the early stages. The Ghanaian government’s quest to ease the pain of small businesses from the devastating consequences of the novel coronavirus is expected to reach at least 200,000 companies, as said by the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI). Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta in March announced that as part of the Coronavirus Alleviation Program (CAP), an amount […]
