Most international businesses are still not very aware of Africa’s investment opportunities. Information costs are high: Africa is fragmented into many different countries, and even in aggregate the continent is a fairly small economy. For several decades, investor ignorance did not matter: with few exceptions Africa’s economies were too badly run for there to be many opportunities for firms of integrity. But there has been a sea change—Africa is on the move. There will be ups and downs, but investors from the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) who remain set in their ways may be missing a giant business opportunity if they fail to pay attention to the changes afoot.

The situation in Africa quietly began to change during the period 1995–2005. Profound macroeconomic reforms tamed inflation and opened economies to international trade. More patchily, the regulatory environment facing international business also improved. Public ratings, such as the World Bank’s Doing Business surveys, enabled African governments to benchmark their performance and began to put pressure on those that were recalcitrant. As the global commodity boom built to its 2008 crescendo, many African countries were well positioned to harness the spike in their export revenues for growth beyond the resource extraction sector itself.