Kenya named among top Africa's investment hubs

Kenya has one of the best and favoured business climates in Africa, thanks to its enthusiasm in improving ease of doing business and initiation of huge infrastructure development projects to reduce cost of doing business.

A new report released yesterday by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya is among the top 10 destinations for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in Africa. This is after attracting investment worth Sh116.4 billion ($1.2b) in 2014.

The African Economic Outlook 2015 report rates Kenya position six in terms of attracting investment from foreign countries and international organisations after Egypt, Morocco, Mozambique, South Africa and Congo.

For the last two years the country has been been aggressive to implement a series of reforms under the ease of doing business approach and generally working on the infrastructure as well as improving security with view to reducing cost of doing business.

The Africa economic outlook report is produced annually by the AfDB , the OECD Development Centre and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The report says Egypt attracted investments to the tune of ($6.5 billion), Morocco ($5.2 billion), Mozambique ($5 billion), South Africa ($4.2 billion) and Congo ($2.8 billion).

Launching the report on Monday during the opening of the AfDB annual meetings in Abidjan, Cote d'ivoire, the acting Chief economist and Vice president Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa said investment in Kenya more than doubled in one year, reaching $1.2 billion in 2014.

"The country is becoming a favoured business hub, not only for oil and gas exploration, but also for manufacturing, transport and ICT," he said. Kenya, he added, has also become a world leader in payment by mobile phone.

"The country is also building a $14.5 billion information technology hub - Konza Technology City outside Nairobi, with a view to attracting investment in business process outsourcing, software development and data centres," noted Kayizzi-Mugerwa.

direct jobs

Konza Technology City, he said will lead to the creation of 16,000 direct jobs by 2018-19 and 200,000 by 2030. "Equally, Kenya performed well in terms of intra-African investment after registering 134 greenfield projects followed by Nigeria (89) and Mauritius (50), respectively, between 2009 and 2014," he said.

Kayizzi-Mugerwa explained that East Africa recorded the highest increase in FDI inflows, with overall investment growing by 9 percent to $9.5 billion in 2014.

Kayizzi-Mugerwa noted that South African companies are the leading investors on the continent, accounting for about 50 per cent of intra-regional greenfield projects. In 2009 to 2-2014, South Africa invested in 312 greenfield projects for a total value of $25.6 billion.