The fact that Africa is the next frontier is proven in this interview with Geoffrey White from Agility, where he points out that not only is the smart money being laid into Africa at the moment, the networks that are being developed are rapidly moving toward making the vast continent of Africa one that is connected for the kind of business that investors are sewing the seeds for now. The African story is very much continuing to read like a promising race for pleasing returns. – LF
ALEC HOGG:  Geoffrey White is here with us, from Agility. Your business does a lot of work in Africa.
GEOFFREY WHITE:  We’re one of the world’s largest logistics companies and we’re focused on building a first-world logistics platform to align with the developments that are going on in Africa. We’re seeing really clear demand developing and there’s a missing link where the first-world standard logistics to take routes to market, don’t actually exist. Interestingly, that works both ways. When you build a route to market, you build a route for African companies to be able to export and access regional markets as well.
ALEC HOGG: It has been interesting – the African story in Davos. In 2010, it seemed to peak, 2011 was still strong, last year not so bad, and yet this year, it’s a little off the agenda. Geopolitics seems to have taken centre stage. I guess you might have seen things differently.
GEOFFREY WHITE: I think it’s interesting from a corporate perspective. Clearly, there’s a smaller contingent from Africa here than there has been historically, but without any doubt, the corporate interest in Africa (of the meetings we’re attending) is growing exponentially.
ALEC HOGG:Â So the smart money actually knows where to put it down.
GEOFFREY WHITE:  I think that things have changed. I think that people now understand the opportunities and are making real plans to actually deploy and invest in the content, and be involved in the African growth story.
ALEC HOGG: What about you? Where are you investing?
GEOFFREY WHITE: We have a plan to build a first-world distribution network that actually connects the whole continent. We launched that in Ghana when we broke a site in Ghana last week. The plan is to build 70 logistics parks of 100 acres each, across all the key locations in Africa to actually provide that pan-African logistics network.
ALEC HOGG:Â Seventy logistics parks: that sounds like a huge investment.
GEOFFREY WHITE: It’s a five-year program, so we’ll take it a step at a time. There’s a plan to do five this year and get them under construction and working, and then it’s very much demand-driven. Our global customers are looking for access to that market. We believe there’s an increasing opportunity for regional trade and export, so now’s the time to be investing and building the infrastructure to support the logistics business.
ALEC HOGG: Well, there’s an Afro-optimist who’s putting his money where his mouth is.  That was Geoffrey White from Agility.
