Investment adventures in commercial African real estate development
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Investors with a long term investment horizon may wish to consider investment opportunities in the development of commercial African real estate such as shopping malls, office blocks and warehouses. In frontier Africa (i.e. Africa outside of South Africa), new projects are typically delivered by developers at double digit yields (calculated as rent/total cost including land). And, importantly for international investors, these yields are in US dollars because rents in frontier Africa are normally paid in dollars or settled in local currency but referenced back to dollars. Applying leverage (we use a maximum of 60%), annual rental escalations of 3-4% and yield compression at time of exit, one can see that it is possible to achieve net compound investment returns in the high teens or more.