Investors un-fazed by looming Africa food crisis

Africa may be facing serious social unrest from rising food prices that could starve its poorest, but some investors remain enthusiastic over a continent whose economic fate is increasingly tied to China not the West.
Even as aid agencies sound alarm bells over an "economic tsunami" from high global food prices, several new investment tools were started this month to let investors track African equity market growth.
April saw the public launch of the Duet Victoire Africa Index, a $30 million fund tracking sub-Saharan equity markets outside South Africa, while index provider Standard & Poor's launched three of their own Africa share indices.
South Africa's Standard Bank has seen its Africa equity fund grown from $20 million last September to $280 million today as investors poured in cash, and is planning another $300 million African corporate debt fund.
Despite recent food riots in Cameroon, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Madagascar, conflicts in Sudan's Darfur, Somalia and east Congo and continuing economic chaos in Zimbabwe, some clearly see long-term rewards worth the significant risks.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said at the weekend it saw 6.5 percent economic growth in Africa in 2008, only a marginal fall from 6.6 percent in 2007 and powered mainly by growth in oil exporting nations such as Nigeria and Angola. Africa's expected resilience is rooted in the same phenomenon causing the food crisis - the seemingly counter-cyclical boom in energy and commodity markets.
Global commodity prices have, in turn, been supercharged by demand from still-robust Asian economies, particularly China. Many investors reckon China's aggressive expansion into African mines, roads, ports and telecoms means that its economic growth will filter through to Africa almost regardless of what happens to long-dominant United States or Europe.
"You look at China and Asia and they are not slowing yet," said Investec strategist Werner Gey van Pittius. "So rising food prices won't mean a train smash - although the very poorest will be hurt." The IMF still sees a risk to Africa from the global credit crunch if investors become more risk averse and so flee the continent, warning of a 20 percent risk of 2008 growth falling to 5 percent as a result.