00:00What's happening now, though, is that there's an acceleration of the activity and interest that's happening in the African stock
00:07markets.
00:08And at Bank of America, what we're seeing is that there's an increase in activity from the private sector themselves
00:16who are looking to list
00:18and also investors who are looking to engage. And this is really driven by the commodity super cycle.
00:23The fact that over the last two, three years in particular, African economies have continued to stabilize their currencies.
00:32Inflation management is better. We're seeing debt management also better as well.
00:36So these are making the economies more attractive. And then also we're seeing more companies having the confidence to come
00:44out
00:44and come into the capital markets at this time.
00:47How do we see the institutional investor interest then changing?
00:53What are you hearing from some of your clients about their engagement and what they're looking for in the types
00:57of companies?
00:58So what we're seeing is certainly more clients and some of the largest institutional clients in the world looking to
01:05us and asking us more about Africa.
01:07Of course, in response to that, we've increased our research coverage on the names that we cover in the continent
01:14in terms of the credits
01:16and also the equity stories that we're following in the region. And so I want to look at, I want
01:21to talk to you about this in three phases, Jennifer.
01:24One is we're looking at, if you look at foreign portfolio investments, in reality, we've seen a big increase in
01:31those numbers,
01:32at least $14 billion over the last year. And when we look at foreign directs investment, which includes foreign portfolio
01:39investment,
01:39that's over $100 billion that we've seen coming into the region. And then we've seen venture capital also coming in
01:46at about $4 billion increase over the last year as well.
01:50Importantly, we're seeing domestic capital where more increasingly more domestic capital is coming into these investments in the region.
02:00So overall, we're seeing more activity in the region. And one of the things that's also fueling it is just
02:07the increasing ease of dealing on the exchanges in Africa
02:12and also the ease that, frankly, exchanges like the London Stock Exchange and other stock markets around the world are
02:19engaging with African companies
02:22and African issuers and financial institutions like Bank of America in making it a better investor experience.
02:28And that's resulting in more flows into the region without a doubt.
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