American investor Finn Walker is the managing partner of Heron Partners, which invests in companies listed on African stock exchanges.
One of the key reasons Walker is bullish on Africa is the continent’s young and fast-growing population. Africa’s population is projected to reach around 2.5 billion by 2050, up from roughly 1.6 billion today – meaning more than a quarter of humanity will be African. It is also a young continent. The number of working-age people (20 to 64 years) is set to nearly double, from 883 million in 2024 to 1.6 billion in 2050.
“We are going to see a very significant increase in the number of people living in Africa … while the rest of the developed world is figuring out how to manage a rapidly aging population,” Walker says.
Heron Partners also seeks to capitalise on misperceptions about the continent. “The world not only inaccurately perceives Africa, but it’s a negative inaccurate perception, which oftentimes leads to persistent mispricings across markets,” he says.
He points, for instance, to the risk of nationalisation – a fear commonly cited by investors. Yet Walker sees no actual trend of listed companies being nationalised in sub-Saharan Africa.
“All investing carries risk, but in Africa you’re disproportionately compensated for risk because of that misperception,” he notes.
Walker doesn’t regard his portfolio as more vulnerable than markets like the US.
“A lot of investors in the US stock market are taking pretty massive risks that AI ends up being massively world-changing and everything we hope it to be – which it may be. But on the off chance that it isn’t, I don’t necessarily see how the stock market today can keep up with the valuations we’re seeing. One analogy I like to use is that for Heron’s portfolio to see a 40% drawdown, we would need simultaneous total-loss events across multiple countries. We would need countries of 150 million people to wake up one morning and stop buying soft drinks and beer and using their mobile phones. For the United States to see a 40% drawdown, all we need to do is have global stocks revert to their long-term valuation averages.”
Read/watch our full interview with Finn Walker: The 23-year-old American running an Africa-focused investment firm