<h1 style="text-align:center;">In the News... The Africa Beats</h1>Welcome to RENEW's In the News…The Africa Beats. The following post includes highlights on topics such as Investing in Africa, Impact Investing and more:Invest in Africa Voice of America - At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, South African President Jacob Zuma and other African leaders discussed what is currently being done to make Africa more attractive to foreign investors. The panel, titled 'De-risking Africa' discussed perceptions that foreign investors have regarding investment in Africa and how to address and change those perceptions. <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/world-econd-forum-africa-24jan13/1590036.html?utm_source=voaafrica&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=en&amp;utm_content=twitterfeed">Read full article</a>Sports Pro - The Africa Cup of Nations, Africa's leading football tournament, kicked off last week in South Africa. One of the shirt sponsors, Invest in Africa, works to promote Africa as a credible business destination and is using the Africa Cup of Nations as a way to promote and celebrate the continent's potential. Invest in Africa sees the football tournament as a great way to showcase some of the world's fastest growing markets, as evidenced by 6.6 billion cumulative television viewers who tuned in for the competition last year. <a href="http://www.sportspromedia.com/guest_blog/how_the_africa_cup_of_nations_can_help_promote_africa_as_a_leading_business/">Read full article</a>Impact Investing Huffington Post - A look at some lessons that impact investors can learn from the struggles and successes of microfinance in the last 30 years, including how impact and returns are measured. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tilman-ehrbeck/lessons-impact-investing-_b_2569243.html">Read full article</a>

Read highlights on topics such as Investing in Africa, Impact Investing and more...

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In the News... The Africa Beats - Part 3

<h1 style="text-align:center;">In the News... The Africa Beats</h1>Welcome to RENEW's In the News…The Africa Beats. The following post includes highlights on topics such as Investing in Africa, Impact Investing and more:Invest in Africa Africa Mentor - More signs are continuing to point to Africa's growing investment climate. Commentators are noting several trends: the growing middle class has more disposable income than the last generation, there is increased investment from the 30 million African diaspora who have migrated from Africa, and there are a significant number of technology incubators popping up all over Africa. <a href="http://africamentor.com/african-investment-climate-heating-up/">Read full article</a>Impact Investing Forbes - The University of Utah recently announced the opening of an impact investing center, created with a gift from technology entrepreneur James Lee Sorenson. The center's goals involve allowing students to gain real-world experience with investing and to study impact investing. Unlike other universities that have a focus on social entrepreneurship, the Center will focus on hands-on investing. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/annefield/2013/02/14/impact-investing-gets-a-university-center/">Read full article</a>SMEs in Africa BusinessTech - Microsoft recently unveiled its 4Afrika Initiative, through which it aims to engage in Africa’s economic development to improve its global competitiveness. The initiative's goals involve making smart devices available to millions of Africa's youth by 2016, helping bring small and medium-sized businesses online, and boosting job skills for Africa's workforce and recent graduates. <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/it-services/31170/microsoft-targets-africas-smes/">Read full article</a>

More signs are continuing to point to Africa's growing investment climate.

In the News... The Africa Beats 

<h1 style="text-align:center;">An in-depth interview with Feleg Tsegaye of Deliver Addis</h1>​​For more stories, download our recent<a href="https://latest-api.renewcapital.com/uploads/RENEW_2020_2021_Impact_Report_web_5e1a98866d.pdf"> Impact Report</a>, and read an abbreviated version of the following story called “Scaling Delivery to Meet Pandemic Demands” on page 18 of the report.While many companies watched demand for their products and services screech to a halt, Deliver Addis, Ethiopia’s premier online food delivery company, had a good year. Founder Feleg Tsegaye and the Roadrunner/Deliver Addis team responded quickly at the start of the pandemic with creativity and speed to scale the company’s services and expand their online store beyond restaurant takeout to include groceries, household supplies and other consumer products.&nbsp;Here’s what Feleg had to say during a conversation in the first quarter of 2021. Most of it is more applicable than ever as the pandemic continues in new forms throughout the globe.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/DA_pic_b9dbe91ad4.png"></figure>Q: First, can you tell me your personal story of the pandemic and your business?&nbsp;The pandemic was unexpected. We had been waiting to see when the pandemic might hit Ethiopia. It seemed like the rest of the world was getting hit first. We bought out a stock of N95 masks the day before the first case was announced in Ethiopia. Within a day of the first documented case, restaurants started calling and saying that foot traffic went to zero within hours. And they were concerned about their livelihoods. Some closed within the first 24 hours and haven’t reopened. It had a very immediate effect.&nbsp;We ended up reducing our prices by 30% to make it easier for people to order. Most people were looking to conserve whatever income they were making because they were not sure what might happen tomorrow. We did what we could to reduce that financial impact to people. We worked with restaurants by providing guidance on how to help prevent Covid-19 transmission within restaurants and provided education to our consumers on how to avoid transmissions. For other restaurants, we helped them come up with a temporary, low priced menu in order to encourage people to order. So, we did a number of things outside of delivery just to make sure that the ecosystem itself could remain somewhat stable. We expanded our fleet by 60% to fulfil orders and to provide more opportunities.&nbsp;It was an interesting time, there was not a lot of precedent, it helped us in the long run and it helped us to help other businesses as well. Most restaurants didn't have to lay off a lot of people. We at least provided some kind of stop gap when many restaurants were feeling the pinch.&nbsp;Q: What is your outlook for your business? What do the next few years look like?A sentiment that is widely held in the tech community is that Covid-19 accelerated the adoption of tech based services and products by 3-7 years. Technology can be a bigger part of our lives even more so than it used to be. For us, our goal is to be as accessible to as many people as possible. For the business as a whole, we are going to expand pretty significantly. Especially in terms of labor and staffing so we look forward to a transformed organization along with the transformed environment that we now find ourselves in.&nbsp;Q: What is the process that you went through as an entrepreneur?&nbsp;It was really trial and error in the beginning. We didn’t have a lot of historical precedent to say what would work and not work. But the fact that we were there to answer the calls of other restaurants and business owners and just reassure them that there was a way through it changed our relationship with our vendors. Yes, we have a business relationship, but at the same time, we all needed to make sure that we all survived and lived to see another day. So I think it allowed me to step outside of the business perspective and really be there for the businesses which were struggling.Q: Are you familiar with the phrase “Standing Ground”? What does it mean to you as an entrepreneur?Yeah, not sure if there’s a specific context to that phrase, other than communicating the importance of resilience. In our case, we couldn't just stand our ground, we had an even greater responsibility given the work that we did, to become more available to people and to prevent people from putting themselves at risk when trying to get food and supplies. Rather than just standing ground, we had to push forward despite the headwinds. We had to launch grocery services and find ways to get people what they wanted rather than forcing them to go to them. We had to push forward as much as we could.&nbsp;As an e-commerce business, connectivity is pretty important to what we do. We could function during the pandemic because we had the bare necessities. When the internet was shut down for 3 weeks with the uncertainty of when it may come back, it prevented us from having operational visibility that we are used to and allowing consumers to reach us.&nbsp; We took some notes from old air traffic control procedures whereby every plane and designator and other details would be written on a piece of paper and have a board in which air traffic controllers would reorder these planes as they were landing. We sent out a blast text and asked our customers to text us your orders. We used these pieces of paper and a large conference table subdivided into different sections based on the status of the order at that time. This paper would go to each of those stations on the tables manned by a specific individual until it was completed. We used that to manage orders, even when we couldn't tell where our drivers were. It took a little bit of creativity.&nbsp;Q: What was the hardest part of 2020/2021 so far for your business?&nbsp;I think the labor force. Staffing has always been a challenge. Because you are trying to bring on people who are not used to formal employment, they may be used to doing things under table or in an undocumented fashion. And as you try to bring them into the formal workforce, there are a&nbsp; lot of people who may not be ready for it. In emerging markets when the economy is growing rapidly, people want to see themselves in it.&nbsp;Q: What support for these challenges did you receive?Thanks to the Impact Angel Network, we were able to raise some additional capital. Especially since we had to reduce prices, we needed to make sure that we were still able to pay and compensate our team fairly. We are in a sector that thrived during the pandemic compared to other sectors, so it was really on our shoulders to support the larger community. Whether that is broadening the consumer base or advising the restaurants based on the feedback we get from customers. We were at a point where we needed to help those individuals who were struggling because if many restaurants close then that would also come to us. We developed a symbiotic relationship during that time, where everyone was trying to figure out how to get through each month.&nbsp;Q: How has your business shifted or pivoted to adapt?Adding grocery services and other deliverable items broadened the use case for our service. Customers who can’t afford to order for every meal or who don't want to do that for other health reasons, can have the option to order ingredients they will use to cook. In Ethiopia, there is even greater value addition because you often find yourselves going to multiple stores to find anything that you need to prepare any recipe you may want.&nbsp; But in our case, we could tell you what a retailer does or doesn’t have without you having to go to find out.&nbsp;Q: What do you think is the most important thing that you learned as an entrepreneur from the global pandemic?&nbsp;Always be prepared for a rainy day. You have no idea what is coming around the corner and so the only thing you can do is be as proactive as possible. So expect that the internet might get shut down or a key team member could come down with Covid-19. You need to continue to build these contingency plans to address these things that might happen.In emerging markets, you become quickly aware of what could go wrong or how things can quickly change. It's a daily reality depending on what sector/country you are operating in. I think it just continued to reinforce that for us. Whereas for others who are used to things always working, those individuals were most hit. A lot of things they may have taken for granted weren’t there. I think Ethiopia prepares you for these situations. But you realize that this is a great life skill rather than just the business you are in now.&nbsp;Q: Anything else to say about resilience? Or how to build a resilient company?This is tough because there are different types of resilience. Financial is one but also the mental resilience as well. I think as a leader, you need to stay optimistic during these times because people look up to you to set the tone in terms of how they should feel about their jobs and situations that affect everyone as a whole. So you need to be prepared to help lead them through those times. It's not always about business but also making sure that they are still feeling positive despite the challenges they are facing and letting them know they are not alone in this; that at the end of the day, you will do everything that you can to make sure that this impacts them as little as possible. That helps people continue in their jobs without worrying about what the future might hold.&nbsp; Picture by Ian Christmann: <a href="www.ianchrismann.com">www.ianchristmann.com</a>&nbsp;Disclaimer: This blog is provided as a recounting of the IAN’s and RENEW's interactions with Deliver Addis and the happenings at Deliver Addis. It is not intended as performance data related to the IAN’s investment in Deliver Addis and is not indicative of other companies in the IAN’s portfolio, their social impact or the performance of investments in them. Any discussion of Deliver Addis's achievements, performance or social impact is no guarantee that such outcomes, performance or impact will be realized by Deliver Addis in the future, or by other IAN portfolio companies or other investments managed by RENEW, now or in the future.

Modernizing e-commerce and logistics in Ethiopia in partnership with Deliver Addis.

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Scaling delivery to meet pandemic demands

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An in-depth interview with Feleg Tsegaye of Deliver Addis

<h1 style="text-align:center;">Afghanistan: Looking Beyond the News</h1><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/DSC_0012_1_0_0964633060.jpg"></figure>Herat is in the news more and more these days, and not for good reasons. But from where I sit, I have hope that these blips of bad news represent the darkness that comes before dawn. The stories that fuel my hope are in front of me every day as I go about my work here. I see the dawn coming in the form of business owners who are making it despite pretty significant odds, the university students that are going to school and starting businesses, people buying and selling goods everywhere, new manufacturing facilities going up in the nearby industrial park, semitrailers packed to the gills with goods swaying down the road to market. Despite 30 plus years of war, the economy is showing signs of growth.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/DSC_0188_2_cfd7bc533d.jpg"></figure>According to the <a href="http://www.aisa.org.af/">Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA)</a>, there was only one telephone landline per 1,000 people in 2002 and no Internet Service Providers (ISP). As of 2010, Afghanistan is leapfrogging over the lack of copper lines and there are 13.3 million cellular subscribers, serviced by five main GSM operators. Their towers now cover 80 percent of this mountainous country. The cost of activating a cellular phone has dropped from $200 to $25 dollars. What a story of how investment can change even a war torn landscape in less than 10 years.Local experts estimate that 20 to 25 percent of Herati’s now have laptop or desktop computers in their homes. Five years ago, the average person didn’t know about the Internet or have an email address, but that is all changing as Afghanistan comes online. There is opportunity everywhere I look...Who wants to be a part of Afghanistan’s next big ICT growth spurt? I know some great entrepreneurs looking for partners. Contact us at <a href="mailto:renew@renewcapital.com">renew@renewcapital.com</a> or follow us on Twitter @RENEWLLC to find out more. &nbsp;

Herat is in the news more and more these days, and not for good reasons.

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Afghanistan: Looking Beyond the News

<h1 style="text-align:center;">Want Encouraging News? Look to Africa.</h1>According to a recent article published in The Economist, Africa is expected to withstand the current economic decline better than many other parts of the world. Entitled “Opportunity Knocks,” the article appeared in the magazine’s October 9, 2008 print edition.The author comments that “Despite the litany of problems, the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa are, by several measures, enjoying a period of unparalleled economic success. And despite the turmoil in the world’s financial markets, international investors still think they can make money there.”“In 1990-94 annual GDP growth was a weak 0.9%; since then, growth has averaged closer to 5%. Before this autumn’s financial meltdown, the IMF was predicting GDP growth of 6.6% this year; now it is predicting only a slightly lower rate,” the article continues.

Africa is expected withstand the current economic decline better...

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Want Encouraging News? Look to Africa.

<h1 style="text-align:center;">Rethinking Risk and Return</h1>The New York Times reported Friday in an article entitled, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/business/yourmoney/13wealth.html">It’s the New Economic Reality. Work With It.</a>, on the lessons that wealth managers are learning from their failed risk assessments and troubled portfolios:Very few believed a financial disaster like the one we are living through could actually happen, according to a forthcoming paper by Robert Seaberg, head of the wealth planning group at Citi Global Wealth Management. Or put another way, the risk models that high net worth and ultra-high net worth investors trusted to insure their portfolios failed.Seaberg discusses four overall lessons that high net worth individuals and their wealth managers should be taking away from their recent losses. Among them, he urges HNIs to “redefine a safe investment” and “diversify more broadly.” Specifically, “Mr. Seaberg said investors now need to look outside the United States and Europe to emerging and frontier markets in all aspects of their portfolios to create the greatest diversification.”In other words, while investors are doubling down on Treasuries as a safe place to wait out the storm in the short term, the smart money will not stay there, particularly as the yield for Treasuries dwindles to almost zero. Rather, HNIs and funds should seek out new and growing markets, like Africa. While these markets carry risks of their own, they are subject to a different set of risks, some of which can be offset by careful due diligence and local representation.At RENEW, we aim to provide HNWIs and funds with the option to diversify their portfolios, thoughtfully and strategically, beyond U.S. and European markets, while at that same time offering the prospect of demonstrable positive impact on the local economy and community as a result.

Very few believed a financial disaster like the one we are living through could actually happen...

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Rethinking Risk and Return

<h1 style="text-align:center;">A Few of My Favorite Things: Some Facts About Africa</h1> As 2011 draws to a close for RENEW and the rest of the world, I wanted to take a few moments to remember some of my favorite things…about Africa:<ul><li>Thirty-six out of 46 African governments made things easier for business in in 2011.</li><li>The International Monetary Fund expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia.</li><li>Africa's combined consumer spending in 2008 was $860 billion, and it is expected to grow to $1.4 trillion by 2020.</li><li>According to Standard Bank, around 60 million Africans have an income of $3,000 a year, and 100 million will in 2015.</li><li>Africa’s enthusiasm for technology is boosting growth. It has more than 600 million mobile phone users—more than America or Europe.</li><li>Ethiopia has grown by about 7.5% this year, without a drop of oil to export.</li><li>Trade between Africa and the rest of the world has increased by 200% since 2000.</li><li>Inflation dropped from 22% in the 1990s to 8% in the past decade.</li><li>In 2010, private-equity firms raised $1.5 billion for projects in Africa.</li><li>In 2010, total foreign direct investment was more than $55 billion—five times what it was a decade earlier, and much more than Africa receives in aid.</li><li>Foreign investors are no longer just interested in oil wells and mines. They are moving on to medium-sized investments.</li></ul><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/recycledafricamap_0_1c5d67af95.jpg"></figure>﻿In the midst of all these great signs of growth in Africa, RENEW is also growing. Highlights from 2011 include:<ul><li>Implementing a project in Afghanistan, including an investor conference in Washington, D.C. and an investor trip to Afghanistan.</li><li>Conducting surveys on the investment climate in nine countries in Africa.</li><li>Running due diligence on opportunities in East Africa</li></ul>Wonder what the future holds for the RENEW team? Stay tuned for more information about what’s ahead in 2012… &nbsp;

As 2011 draws to a close for RENEW and the rest of the world...

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A Few of My Favorite Things: Some Facts About Africa

<h1 style="text-align:center;">How Does Africa Look Now?</h1>When we first launched this blog about 9 months ago, the first piece we put together - while the global economic situation was still fairly optimistic, mind you - made the case for “Investing in unfamiliar territory” by listing <a href="../../renew/blog/2008/investing-unfamiliar-territory.html">10 compelling reasons</a> that investors should consider Africa much more seriously. Then in September, I blogged about an IMF report that compared the economic prospects of a group of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries (largely the same group in which RENEW currently does business) to the position of East Asian economies in the 1980’s, just before their growth took off. The comparison was striking - but does it still hold? The financial sector has undergone major shocks since last summer. What are we to make of Africa as a destination for investment dollars, these days?Well, this is not a light and heady time for African economies - or businesses - to be sure. Almost a decade of consistently strong GDP growth in SSA has been snatched away by the global downturn; credit is tight and leaders in all sectors feel the pressure.But financial crises have a funny way of upsetting conventional wisdom in ways that periods of growth and prosperity cannot. Many SSA countries may have been posting impressive year-on-year growth, but that didn’t seem to be enough to catch Western investors’ attention while other options closer to home beckoned - with ultimately illusory returns. Now that Western markets are in upheaval, business analysts are taking a more serious look at Africa.On the heels of fresh, powerful critiques that question the long-term value of foreign aid to Africa and champion a business approach (see former Goldman Sachs economist Dambisa Moyo’s compelling new book, “Dead Aid,” and her Wall Street Journal summary article, the Harvard Business Review included a piece titled Now’s the Time to Invest in Africa in its Breakthrough Ideas for 2009. Just this week, Time ran its “What’s Next 2009″ feature; sure enough, it includes a strong case for investment growth in Africa titled Africa, Business Destination.The conclusion these articles draw is not that while Western markets languish in uncertainty, Africa has become the new safe-haven. The continent still struggles in many areas. But global economic crisis has cast in stark relief just how much African economies will grow during the next decade, even in the face of worldwide recession. That doesn’t fit with typical Western expectations of Africa. Time quotes IMF senior advisor David Nellor:“The private sector is the key driver,” wrote Nellor, “and financial markets are opening up.” War is down. Democracy is up. Inflation and interest rates are in single digits. Terms of trade have improved. "Crucially,"* said Nellor, “growth is taking off.” The IMF puts Africa’s average annual growth for 2004 to ‘08 at more than 6% — better than any developed economy — and predicts the continent will buck the global recessionary trend to grow nearly 3.3% this year.The Time article, as well as Dambisa Moyo’s article in the WSJ, outline a host of other reasons to take a truly business-led approach to Africa, not least because of the social and civic dividends in accountability, dignity and long-term sustainability that business-led grow will yield. But for our purposes, let’s take a step back and be clear: Africa’s economies, driven by the growth of private businesses, are still growing at a time when Western economies are shrinking. Imagine what these businesses are capable of achieving once capital markets and consumers around the world come out from hiding.

What are we to make of Africa as a destination for investment dollars, these days?

How Does Africa Look Now?

<h1 style="text-align:center;">Uncertainty in Africa</h1>To those wondering what will become of nascent capital markets in emerging and frontier economies in the wake of last year’s financial upheaval, I recommend a fascinating <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/magazine/17wwln-lede-t.html?_r=2&amp;ref=magazine">piece by Niall Ferguson</a> in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine; read it not for a prediction of what will happen but rather as a warning against overreaction. In it, Ferguson examines the human reflexes that drive reactions to financial crisis:"For reasons to do with human psychology and the failure of most educational institutions to teach financial history, we are always more amazed when such things happen than we should be. As a result, 9 times out of 10 we overreact. The usual response is to introduce a raft of new laws and regulations designed to prevent the crisis from repeating itself. In the months ahead, the world will reverberate to the sound of stable doors being shut long after the horses have bolted, and history suggests that many of the new measures will do more harm than good."Ferguson elaborates on the positive impact of financial innovation in the U.S. and abroad, dangers notwithstanding. For instance, the securitization of credit lowered costs for consumers in the U.S., while the globalization of finance drove huge growth improvements in emerging economies, particularly Asia. Now investors are pulling back and regulators are swooping in - both healthy reactions so long as they aren’t overdone.Yet it’s difficult to know where the crisis and the reactions that follow will leave Africa’s markets. A recent paper, titled <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1422072">How the Economic Crisis Is Hurting Africa–And What to Do About It</a> by Todd Moss of the Center for Global Development, examines the effect of recent economic turmoil on capital flows to Africa as the continent struggles to steady itself amidst second and third-order financial sector aftershocks. For instance:"One unfortunate outcome of the crisis may be the strangling of the nascent and potentially very sizeable private equity sector. The Emerging Markets Private Equity Association reports that the number of its member funds targeting Africa rose from 16 to 21 in 2008 and new funds jumped by 37 percent to $3.2 billion. But it also expects a very difficult fundraising environment in 2009–10. Most of the private equity raised in recent years to invest in Africa (much of it with some official component, such as the multiple funds started by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation or the African Development Bank) should be locked up for the long term and is unlikely (or unable) to exit quickly. However, this asset class was just beginning to establish itself and the many funds that had not yet completed fundraising or were still being formed may find their plans delayed until the global situation stabilizes and appetite for frontier emerging markets returns."The effects on Africa’s private equity market are still uncertain. Much depends on whether investors see more risk in Africa these days than they did before financial crisis hit developed markets, says Moss:"The other unknown is how investors will interpret risk in Africa over the medium term. Many of the large institutional investors had begun to look seriously at frontier emerging markets such as Africa. Whether they will now recoil because of the perceived risk or view Africa as a potential diversification play in a turbulent world is still far from clear."The risks to business in Africa are real, but by no means should they prohibit investors from expanding their portfolios into one of the few regions of the world that is maintaining growth despite the present economic climate. There is also the fact that growth in Africa is driven by the formalization of a huge amount of economic activity that has until recently remained too disorganized to tap. It turns out we’ve all got some learning to do, and the lessons the developed world is re-learning about solid business practices are the same ones African businesses are starting to absorb. The recent economic experience should draw investors and stable businesses together, wherever in the world they are.

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