Traffic light for Africa – SME index

A traffic light for Africa

SME Index for 34 African countries supports the decisions of German investors

Morocco, South Africa and Egypt are the most attractive countries in Africa for foreign investors. This is the result of the Africa SME Index that the BRS Institute for International Studies at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (BRS IIS) has published together with africon GmbH, the German Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (BVMW) and Nexis International. The study is intended to help German companies successfully gain a foothold in selected countries on the continent. To this end, it uses a traffic light system to divide the countries examined into promising and less recommendable targets.

“Despite all current risks and problems, Africa is a continent that will shape the future of humanity”, says Professor Jürgen Bode, Director of BRS IIS and Vice President for Internationalisation and Diversity at the university. The World Bank estimates that Africa is home to about half of the ten fastest growing economies. “For this reason, Africa has been at the top of the agenda of international organisations and industrialised countries such as China and Japan for some time now”, Bode says.

Orientation for market entry German companies on the other hand are not among the pioneers. This could perhaps change with better orientation. The Africa SME Index presents a rating for 34 African countries. It records 55 factors for each of them, which are again combined into 16 indicators specifically relevant to SMEs and then condensed into three key indicators. Finally, each country is given an overall key figure, which is assigned to the categories Top Performer or Business

Opportunities (green and light green), Development Potential (yellow) or Difficult States (red) and thus to a traffic light colour.

During the presentation of the Index at the Road Show “Erfolgreich nach Afrika” (“Successful to Africa”) of the German Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Korntal near Stuttgart, participants reacted extremely positively to the new orientation aid. “If we had had the Africa SME Index two years ago”, says Steven Denk, project manager at WestfalenWIND GmbH, for instance, “our market entry would have been easier”. The study is available free of charge; interested parties can

More information: www.brs-iis.de/angebote/mittelstands-index-afrika

support the project as sponsors.