OREANDA-NEWS. October 05, 2016. Renaissance Capital, a leading emerging and frontier markets investment bank, yesterday opened its 2nd Annual East Africa Investor Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

This year’s edition of the conference once again brings together the world’s largest investors and East Africa’s leading companies from a wide range of sectors, including oil and gas, financial services, consumer and retail, and telecoms and media.

The forum, held until 7 October, provides a platform for a lively discussion on the current investment climate in East Africa and gives an opportunity to interact with the region’s business leaders, prominent policymakers and opinion formers. During the first two days of the conference, over 150 one-on-one meetings will take place, followed by three days of regional investor trips to Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania.

Anthony Simone, Acting CEO, Renaissance Capital, commented: “This is the second year we are holding our East Africa Investor Conference and we are pleased with the level of interest from both international investors and companies. Due to recent currency challenges in some African equity markets, Kenya and East Africa in general have emerged as a good alternative for investors. Despite Kenya’s recently introduced cap on bank lending and still relatively high budget deficit, the country’s economy benefits from IMF support, lower oil prices and improvement in current account deficit. While Sub-Saharan Africa investment has slowed down in recent years, capital inflows in East Africa remained high and increased in some instances. Hence, we are glad to be at the forefront of driving investment into the region and further expanding our footprint in Africa.”

Charles Robertson, Global Chief Economist, Renaissance Capital, added: “Although East Africa, and Kenya specifically, are yet to deliver substantial progress either economically or industrially the region stands out as one of the best emerging opportunities for international investors specialised in frontier markets. According to our forecast, Ethiopia is poised to become East Africa’s biggest economy in 2016, overtaking Kenya, while the latter remains significantly wealthier on the GDP per capita basis in the region. Out of all East African currencies, the Ugandan shilling is most likely to appreciate in the near-to-medium term. Meanwhile, a combination of excellent demographics and the best educated labour force frontier markets have ever seen supports our positive view of the long-term growth for nearly all of Africa’s billion population. Overall, we continue to believe Africa will be a US\\$29 trillion economy by 2050, larger than the 2012 combined GDP of the US and the Eurozone.”

Renaissance Capital’s 2nd Annual East Africa Investor Conference is a testament to the Firm’s continued commitment to the continent. The Firm held its 7th Annual Pan-Africa 1:1 Conference in Lagos, Nigeria, in May 2016 and has recently appointed Arnold Dublin-Green as a Sub-Saharan Africa Equity Trader to further enhance its already strong global and SSA-focused trading team.