OREANDA-NEWS. May 21, 2012. Renaissance Capital, the leading emerging markets investment bank, opened its 3rd Annual Pan-Africa Investor Conference in Lagos, Nigeria; starting three days of discussion and hundreds of 1:1 investor meetings in Nigeria’s commercial capital.

In her welcome address, Yvonne Ike, Renaissance Capital’s CEO, West Africa, underscored the Firm’s commitment to Africa through offering global investors access to the continent’s unique range of opportunities and early-stage investment cases to support its phenomenal growth momentum. “Africa is attracting unprecedented attention as capital shifts from developed to growth markets,” she said. “With the highest concentration of fast-growing economies, Africa will be the investment success story of the next decade.”

The conference opening saw the attendance of His Excellency Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, who commented on the status of infrastructure projects across the state, including power provision and transport; and elaborated on its wider development agenda, calling for increased foreign investment in Nigeria.

Renaissance Capital’s award-winning research analysts led The Bellwether Panel, an interactive session that addressed the macroeconomic issues shaping the present and near-term future of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Panel participants included James Mwangi, CEO and Managing Director of Equity Bank, and Bismarck Riwane, Managing Director, Financial Derivatives Company Ltd. The range of topics discussed included the likely impact of the EU crisis and potential China slowdown on SSA, the reform outlook and recent and upcoming elections in a number of SSA countries.

The conference, which runs from 16-18 May, brings together selected high-opportunity established and emerging companies from Nigeria, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Zambia, as well as a number of pan-African operations, with hundreds of high-level investors from around the world, looking at Africa’s most exciting investment cases in the metals & mining, oil & gas, banking, agriculture and consumer sectors. Attending investors are drawn from Germany, China, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK, UAE, US, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia, among other countries.