By Simeon Kerr, Financial Times
Ashish Thakkar is wearing large sunglasses as he swings open the doors to his 73rd floor penthouse in Dubai’s financial district. Casually turned out as if he were in Silicon Valley, the African-Indian entrepreneur apologises for any suggestion of affectation — the dark glasses are to protect his eyes after corrective eye surgery.
The spacious apartment is buzzing: besuited executives are holding meetings in side-rooms with views across Dubai’s skyline. In the kitchen, cooks are flipping rotis. Thakkar’s home acts as a spill-over office for Atlas Mara, his joint venture with veteran banker Bob Diamond that hopes to transform African financial services.
Thakkar spends a considerable amount of time on the fledgling financial services business, but while criss-crossing continents he also wears his original hat as founder of conglomerate Mara Group.
Spanning property, manufacturing and agriculture, the group has grown from being a computer-importing business, which he founded in 1996 with a $5,000 loan. Ebulliently positive about the outlook for Africa, Mara’s latest focus has been property development. It is building hotels, malls and service apartments in, among other places, Tanzania and Uganda.
Like many emerging markets, that for retail and commercial property is expanding with the continent’s boom. Thakkar points out that Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city, with around 20m residents, only has two shopping malls.
For all the optimism about Africa’s economic opportunities, infrastructure continues to drag. The World Bank estimates infrastructure bottlenecks are damping private sector productivity by 40 per cent, putting the problem on a par with corruption, crime and red tape.
Mara will soon unveil a partnership with a global multinational for a large venture to invest in infrastructure across sub-Saharan and north Africa. Seeking to take advantage of Thakkar’s government contacts, the joint venture will invest in new and existing projects with a focus on power generation.
Africa is particularly underserved in power generation. Consumption is a tenth of that of the developing world, according to the World Bank. The 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa generate the same amount of power as Spain.
Another new venture hopes to capitalise on growing interest in online shopping with the launch of an ecommerce platform across 25 countries, based in Kenya. The platform plans to combine business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer interfaces, although it will face typical problems of logistics and regulatory disharmony across the continent.
Read more: Mara Group ebulliently positive about the outlook for business in Africa
Source: FT.COM
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