Because our investments are for the long term, we get substantially involved in the details of the local investment climate. From what I have seen as an investor and with the Corporate Council on Africa, many African countries have made significant advances in recent years to deal with problems that in the past have discouraged investment and growth. Privatization is now widely accepted across Africa. It is tied to infrastructure development since many of the activities being privatized are infrastructure. An outstanding development in this regard has been power generation.
African governments are now willing to accept independent private power producers.
This is extremely important to investors who are setting up facilities and need to install their own power generation plants, which is common in Africa. The option to sell excess power to the national power grid is an important factor for firms in determining an investment's feasibility. This new outlook on the part of African governments also represents an important change in attitude that power does not have to be produced by one huge government-owned entity. There is also increased interest in fee-based facilities. This includes toll roads, such as the Resano Garcia road between Mozambique and South Africa, toll bridges, and airports.