by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2020 | Economics
A financial centre is often described in the language of finance, funds, fees, domiciles. The more revealing lens is economic. As 2020 opens with the Kigali International Financial Centre now operating, the question worth asking is not how much capital it holds, but...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2020 | Money
Every regional investor knows the quiet cost of the status quo: to back an East African business at scale, you often have to leave East Africa to do it. The fund gets built offshore, the fees are earned offshore, and the region supplies the risk while others supply...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2020 | Farming
Rwanda’s economy still rests on its land, on the coffee, tea, maize and horticulture grown by smallholders and moved through thin, expensive supply chains. A financial centre, by contrast, deals in funds and holding companies far above the field. As 2020 opens...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2020 | Lifestyle
Most accounts of a financial centre stay in the boardroom, funds, tax regimes, holding companies. But a centre that works changes a city long before it changes a balance sheet, in the hotels its visitors fill, the offices its professionals occupy, the neighbourhoods...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2020 | Money
East Africa is not short of investment ideas. What it has long lacked is a place to put them together. For years, funds raised to back Rwandan and regional businesses have been assembled, domiciled and governed somewhere else, in Mauritius, in Amsterdam, in London,...