The continent has vast proven mineral wealth in its gold and diamonds and other precious stones and metals, but also industrial ores in terms of hundreds of billions of tonnes of phosphates, iron ore, coal as well as nickel, copper and cobalt that have barely been touched. Africa's biggest and often-understated potential lies in farming. A diversity of climate creates opportunities for a very wide variety of produce including sugar cane, cotton, coffee, tea, rice, bananas and other tropical fruit as well as subsistence crops such as cassava, yams, maize, millet and sorghum. There are also vast forestry resources and opportunities for ranching. Observers regard it as an obscenity that Africa requires food aid - with proper organisation, the continent can not only feed itself but also provide a huge export surplus.
Opportunities though have to be carefully screened and additional factors taken into consideration.
One of the greatest foreign investment debacles was the British Government's scheme to introduce commercial groundnut farming to the then Tanganyika in the late 1940s. For potential foreign investors today, not only picking the right project is important, it is also vital to identify countries that display an atmosphere conducive to foreign investment. Its huge oil and gas resources have comprised a mixed blessing. On the one hand, huge wealth has been generated. On the other, this wealth has been unevenly distributed and has bred corruption and not least caused other sectors of the economy to be neglected.