Amid the gloom and doom of world markets, Africa was as ripe for investment and “attractive returns” in just the same way as China was in the Seventies, Anglo American South Africa head Kuseni Dlamini said on Friday.

Dlamini told the Nedgroup Securities second African investment conference in Johannesburg that, in the current climate of gloom and doom in global markets, Africa was the continent that offered the world immense investment opportunity.

“Just as, in the early Seventies, US leaders Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger predicted the rise of China, Africa is a sleeping giant that is yet to rise to take its rightful place in the mainstream spheres of economic and commercial affairs,” Dlamini said.

Africa ought to rise, he said, from being a Third World underdeveloped continent to being a First World globally competitive economic giant.

“In the current climate of gloom and doom in global markets, Africa is the continent that offers the world immense opportunities for investment for attractive returns,” Dlamini emphasised to mining investors.

“What is required is for the right conversations to take place among all the stakeholders in order to pursue value opportunities on the continent so that we put in place the appropriate regulatory instruments as well as the necessary social and physical infrastructure,” he said.

“We have seen what a country like Botswana has done and the outcomes and we’ve also seen the challenges in other countries like Chad, where there is still a need of stabilisation and the putting in place of the correct systems,” he said.

Anglo American was the largest employer on the African continent, with a total of 130 000 employees and was involved in eight African countries and was seeking opportunities in five others.

He said Anglo American, one of the world’s top-five mining groups, had a “passionate commitment” to Africa and occupied a position in the top ten of the London Stock Exchange’s FTSE 200 index.


In 2007, Anglo achieved its highest-ever operating profit of $10,1-billion.

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