Is now the right time to invest in Africa?

Video: Sjoerd Van Loon, CEO at IJS Global shares his insight on investing in Africa as he participated in a panel at our flagship 3PL & CSCO Event, also see answers from surveys done by eft!

Sjoerd Van Loon, CEO at IJS Global participated in eft’s 3PL Summit and Chief Supply Chain Officer Forum in Amsterdam this past November. Van Loon, took part in a very interesting panel discussion on investing in Africa and growth. The eft team caught up with him during the break to ask him a couple questions.

View video interview here

eft’s research showed that a little over 30% of third party logistics companies expect their growth in sub-Saharan Africa in the next three years  to be between 10-25% year on year.

 

 

 

 

IJS expects to be one of the forwarding companies with that increased growth as CEO, Sjoerd Van Loon explains in his video interview “Africa is an emerging market where we would like to get a stronger foothold in…11 of the African countries belong to the top fastest growing economies in the world…and I think we (in the forwarding and logistics industry) should all become part of that opportunity.”

 

However 40% of the companies surveyed do not have any business in Africa nor expect their business to grow if located there. This might be due to the challenges faced doing logistics in Africa.  eft’s recent survey questioned the same companies what their biggest challenge was regarding logistics in Africa. 42% mentioned corruption as their biggest problem followed security as 26% made the latter their first choice. 

 

 

 

 

Eric Melet, Managing Director, Development & Concessions at Bolloré Africa Logistics also participated in eft’s flagship event in Amsterdam and further explained the complexity of working in this continent as the session went on: “Working in Africa, its 50 countries, 50 different business systems for customs, 50 different patterns of difficulties in logistics, 50 different ways of thinking about the business and 50 different ways of consumer thinking. Africa can’t work with just one strategy.” However, Africa is “moving forward in four sectors; healthcare, automotive, garment & shoe industry and telecom.” 

 

See more on Eric Melet’s presentation here

View Sjoerd Van Loon’s video here 

 

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