In 2007 when Michael Ndinisa founded MNCapital Group, an Africa-focused communication and research company, little did he know that he will work with several captains of industry, promoting relationships with key decision makers at a broad range of African focused financial institutions, such as the International Finance Corporation, the African Development Bank, the Abraaj Group, Government Employees Pension Fund South Africa, the World Bank, Public Investment Corporation of South Africa, the China Africa Development Fund, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the African Business Roundtable, and Debswana Pension Fund
Outside of Africa, Mr. Ndinisa also facilitates business relationships, private/public partnerships, projects and initiatives around the world. It is also interesting to note that he also served as partner of Africonomie UK, an emerging markets professional services firm among many other roles including serving as an advisor to many regional and global bodies and institutions.
“We build investment bridges and address the key issues facing institutions with the appetite to allocate capital to traditional and alternative asset classes across Africa,” he said. “We support institutional investors with capacity and capability programmes designed to help them allocate capital to alternative assets or form co-investment partnerships. Fund and asset managers benefit from our network to access and diversify their institutional investor base.”
Beyond fundraising, Ndinisa says, MN Capital supports fund managers with access to deal pipelines that meet their investment criteria. He uses his experience and relationships to provide advice on international best practices in the fields of international development, risk management and event production. He had a chat with Victor Adar – Oriwa on his life and investment journey thus far.
What motivated you to start the company?
The exposure to the international market or the investment community at an international level played a pivotal role in the birth of MNCapital Markets. I quickly realised the potential that Africa has in becoming a global powerhouse and yet there was not much deliberate focus on engaging with institutional investors, investment professionals and other key stakeholders within the investment space on the ground, in spite of a growing appetite of international investors in establishing relations in the continent. The idea behind the founding of MNCapital Group was to have an African investment communications firm that is rooted in Africa, run by Africans, and focusing on the development of Africa, and hence our founding catch-phrase was, “Adding Value to Africa” because that is exactly what we set out to achieve.
What is unique about MNCapital?
Investment communications firms have mushroomed in the one and a half decade of MNCapital Group’s existence. Some have gone out of business and more continue to pop-up. What I believe has kept us going is the resilience that forms part of the firm’s DNA. If you focus more on how much you are going to make as a profit from the work that you do, it will be very easy to give up and abandon the ultimate goal. So, I think to answer this question, what makes us unique is resilience – and that on its own should tell you that there is blood, sweat and tears involved in pulling off the kind of platforms that we create.
What has been the company’s biggest achievement?
We have won a number of accolades including being the proud Winners of the 2022 ‘Best Africa-Focused Investment Communication & Support Business – South Africa by Wealth & Finance International in the 7th Annual Fund Awards 2022. We were also the proud Runners up of the 2022 Service Provider to Financial Services Sector by ABSIP National
You recently convened an Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) conference in South Africa. In your view, what is the future of ETFs?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4iR), like any other industrial revolution before, is really a game-changer. It has disrupted many industries, forcing many companies to either proverbially go up in smoke or pivot. The investment space is not immune to these disruptions, which can either be a welcome ally or a force, depending on the ability of each company to adapt to the changing world. We have, for quite some time now, come to terms with the fact that we are living in what we have come to know as the VUCA world, which basically describes the world as being in a state of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. This sets apart industries according to their ability to innovate, and the greatest thing about the state of the VUCA world is that those that are able to innovate or adapt to the fast-paced environment on which they operate are able to thrive. Which means that in spite of the VUCA state, there is a plethora of opportunities that lay beyond the seemingly state of chaos.
So, the ETFs are one of the innovative tools that institutional investors, as our primary target market, so-to-speak, can utilise to stay ahead of the curve. It is basically a big move from the traditional investment vehicles, as much as ETFs exist within the listed market space, however, they are designed to have some kind of a cushion for the investor against the volatile markets. So, I am quite positive that the ETFs will only grow in strength particularly in the African continent. Admittedly, there is still a lot of work ahead, but the future looks bright, as we continue to put in the work to achieve the Africa which generations after generations will continue to cherish. After all, that is the main reason behind the sustainability agenda.
What do we look forward to this year?
We are continuing with our continental drive to create platforms for government officials, industry regulators, asset owners, asset managers and many other key stakeholders to deliberate on the issues that impact them. We have quite a busy schedule ahead, one that will see us being in a different country in each of the coming months, right up to December. We are closing off the year with a special gathering of Africa Trustees where we provide a platform for new and experienced trustees to get equipped with the necessary tools they need to function optimally in their day-to-day operations. So, we will be taking trustees to Dubai in December.
What challenges have you faced along the way? And what have you learned from them?
The reality of the work that we do is that we get to learn each-and-every day. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to the kind of work that we do. I believe we were one of the hardest-hit industries when the Covid-19 pandemic forced the entire world to work from home. Resilience is what keeps us going, and we owe this to the support of many people who appreciate the kind of work that we do and come on board in full support of our efforts.
I would say the key take-home points from our experiences we have with each and every forum that we put together are; authenticity, resilience, and ultimately, relations. When people support you or the efforts that you put in your work, you owe it to them to be authentic, and we can only achieve that by pulling all the stops to produce world class conferences, where participants would emerge having gained value for the time and resources invested.
And taking this a little further, our conferences agenda is always designed in such a way that deliberations engaged in during the conference days will outlast those two conference days and evolve into implementable strategies, that well, in turn bring us closer to our ambitious goal of creating a global economic powerhouse that is the African continent.
Resilience simply means that we are able to go beyond the challenges because what is key is where we know we are headed and what we know we can achieve beyond the exhausting burden of challenges we face, not only as a company, but as the entire continent that is willing and working towards a certain goal. Lastly, with relations, it goes without saying that we need to become a community of people that believe in the goal we have set out to achieve – it requires a collective effort from all stakeholders to pull off the work that Africa needs to do if we are to achieve the Africa we deserve.
Where do you see MNCapital Group five years from now?
We have embarked on an ambitious project as a company, and that is to establish offices in every country that is ready to embrace the Africa Economic Development Agenda. This is purely in an effort to treat each and every economic set up with the uniqueness it deserves. We are trying to avoid falling into the trap of attempting to apply the “global best practices” where they cannot fit. We are not necessarily against adopting best practices as it were, however, experience has taught us to acknowledge the uniqueness of each and every economic set up, and use these “best practices” mainly for benchmarking purposes, but also identify what makes that particular economic set up unique and leverage on its unique resources or abilities to make that country strive. It is very difficult to achieve this if we are not on the ground.
Therefore, it has become apparent to us as a company that we need to have people that have an intimate understanding of a particular country to run the project that are dedicated to that particular country. We have seen how well that works with the establishment of our Botswana office. That also gives us an opportunity to cover much ground in that particular country with the flagship projects that we are running. We have a project that is dedicated to unlocking investable projects in general, for instructional investors, and that is the Institutional Investors Forum, then we have one that focuses on ESG and sustainability, and that is the ESG and Sustainable Investment Forum, and then we have the ETFs Investment Forum, dedicated to shining the spotlight on this investment vehicle that is fairly new to the African continent. We also have an Infrastructure and Alternative Investment Forum, and then the Trustees Intensive.
There is a lot of work to be done, and therefore there is no telling how much we would have gone in the next five years or in the next decade, but what I can say is that we are hard at work, getting a step closer to our ultimate goal with each and every project that we put together.
