Donald Kaberuka - Rwandan economist and the current president of the African Development Bank

“The reassessment of African risk in the aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis is creating a unique window of opportunity for making the continent an attractive place for profitable investment.”

Maria Ramos - CEO of Absa bank

“Africa did not go through the recession unscathed. That’s not possible; we’re part of the global economy. But we did relatively OK, given the depth of the global recession. If you look across the African economies, the biggest ones do reflect the downturn. But we’re starting to see African economies come back—whether you look at Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia—and show some decent growth. Going into the global crisis and recession, African economies were already growing pretty strongly.”

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala - Minister of Finance for the Federal Republic of Nigeria

"Future global economic growth will increasingly come from emerging markets. Following more than 20 years of hard-won political and economic reform, sub-Saharan Africa will be an important part of this story.”

McKinsey on Africa: A continent on the move

Dominic Barton - Managing Director, McKinsey & Company

"Doing business in Africa requires a long-term commitment and a steady hand. There will be ups and downs, as the global economic crisis showed, but many multinationals have already established a big presence on the continent."

Jim Collins - Business Author and Theorist

"If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation."

Nicholas Eberstadt - political economist who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute

"Over the next two decades, slightly more than a quarter of the increase in working-age manpower is expected to accrue in Sub-Saharan Africa."