Trigone Capital Finance S.A., a Geneva-based financial company, will launch an investment fund for Africa - the Global African Development Fund (GLAD) - in May. The creation of this fund is the outcome of a seminar organized in June last year by UNCTAD, in cooperation with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). This Pilot Seminar on the Mobilization of the Private Sector to Encourage Foreign Investment Flows towards the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) showed the international investor community that notwithstanding widespread perceptions to the contrary there are genuine investment opportunities in many poor countries that have attracted little portfolio investment until now (see Note to correspondents N°30).
GLAD will be an open-ended fund, registered in the British Virgin Islands, and administered by Mees Pierson Fund Services (Ireland). With an initial capital of US$15-20 million, the fund’s target size is US$200 million.
The objective of GLAD is capital appreciation over the medium to long term, mainly for investment in traded debts and stocks of African countries. Fifteen percent of its net asset value will be allocated to direct investment in the capital of young enterprises in the continent. UNCTAD, UNIDO and other multilateral institutions have been asked to identify development projects for investment by GLAD. For its part, UNCTAD will encourage its member States to submit investment projects, through their investment promotion agencies.
Boosting Partnerships for Development
Bringing the investment community worldwide into projects with development impact has become a growing theme of UNCTAD’s work in recent years. For instance, at UNCTAD IX in 1996, the Banque International à Luxembourg (BIL) announced its intention to create a private fund for micro-finance. And, at an UNCTAD meeting on enterprise development in December 1997 (see Note to correspondents N°53) it was announced that the fund would be managed by Axa Asset Management, the second largest asset management company in the world.
Other partnerships between the UNCTAD secretariat and the private sector will be launched at an international meeting convened by the Secretary-General, Mr. Rubens Ricupero, in Lyon (France) from 9 to 13 November, 1998. This ‘Partners for Development’ meeting will pool the forces of the private sector, research institutes, and non-governmental organizations to get practical development projects off the ground.
