African Prosperity Appeals to Foreign Investment Community

In the last few years, China, Brazil, Russia and India have been generating lots of attention around the investment world as they have been the biggest countries emerging as new consumer markets. Their populations add up to close to half the world’s total and these new markets have been helping drive the global economy forward as the west still struggles. The fact is that there have been many other regions of the world that have been experiencing prosperity in their countries and their contributions to the growth of the global economy should go unappreciated.

One region in particular that has been growing at an unprecedented rate, has been the continent of Africa. Long seen as the “dark continent” that has mostly had an impoverished population, it is now viewed by many in the business and investment community as a "dark horse" in the growing global economy as it is beginning to rise out of the depths of its economic despair. Since the turn of the century, Africa as a whole has outgrown both the United States and the European Union countries as far as GDP is concerned and is forecast to continue to in the foreseeable future.

The nations within the continent have not succeeded on their own, as many other countries have been securing trade deals and making infrastructure investments, to building a good foundation for the region and tap into their vast potential. With close to one billion people, Africa is seen as having loads of potential once the many prosperity measures that have been implemented, take hold. Some analysts believe that the region, with all it’s abundance of natural resources, could one day, once they are all tapped by foreign countries in need of such commodities, join the other leading countries near the top of the list but it still has a long way to go.

Currently, Africa’s growth rate is second only to Asia’s and it is still steadily growing. In the past ten years, China’s bilateral trade with African countries has increased by up to twenty times and the two regions expect that their bilateral trade numbers will reach $300 billion by the year 2015. Other appealing emerging markets such as India, Brazil and Russia are also getting involved in investing in the continent and taking advantage by capitalising on the vast amount of opportunities that are available now. It has taken a long time for Africa to finally start to get on it’s feet and realize it’s economic potential. Now that is on the rise, the rest of the world markets better watch out for the new competition on the world economic stage. It’s about time.