He knows what he is talking about having done some of the biggest investment deals in places like Zimbabwe where Renaissance was behind the $750-million acquisition of Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company by the Essar Group in India. Or raised the equity capital needed by Coal of Africa for it to start open-cast mining operations at Mapungubwe.
However, Sacks warns that South Africa's low growth levels of between three and four percent are an impediment that may prevent multi-national companies from investing here. When compared with countries like Nigeria, which is growing at about 10%, he says multinationals will be more likely to move into the high growth regions where countries will grow through a crisis.
His message is that South African companies must look for "investments in their own back yard" rather than heading for remote markets such as India, Europe or South America.
Sacks points out that countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia and even Nigeria are hungry for fast-moving consumer goods but South African companies are not investing in those markets.
He says that with a huge population of consumers - many of them with access to money - the fast-moving consumer goods stores are where investments are needed.
The African Development Bank, on the other hand, says that the prospects for regional growth are behind the longer-term prospects for Africa.
In its Regional Integration Strategy Paper (RISP) for the southern Africa region for the years between 2011 and 2015, the AfDB says the 12 countries in the region represent a formidable market comprising 16,7% of the continent's population and producing 40% of Africa's gross domestic product.
The region is well endowed with natural resources, has potential for major energy generation projects and offers many value-added productive activities.
In terms of the RISP, the primary goals for southern Africa are:
It says that while southern Africa represents about 4% of the world's population it contributes less than one percent to global trade and exports are mainly of primary resources. On an intra-regional basis, manufactured products dominate exports, Southern Africa's dependence on commodity exports has left it vulnerable to shocks induced by fluctuating commodity prices and demand. With a population of 160,7-million people living in the region's 6 574-million square kilometres, it is dominated by South Africa.
However, countries other than South Africa are contributing little to overall growth. For instance, Angola - the second largest economy in the region - contributed just 10% to the regional gross domestic product while the other ten countries between them contributed 18,5% and South Africa contributed balance.
To overcome some of the problems facing the southern Africa region the AfDB seeks to improve levels of trade between different countries. While the value of the region's total trade increased from $55-billion in 1980 to $322,4-billion in 2008, the intra-regional trade growth was not as impressive. It rose from $11,6-billion in 2000 to $29,3-billion.
According to the bank this was driven mainly be a shift from Europe to South Africa as a source for imported goods in line with the Southern Africa Development Community's trade protocol.
As the bank points out, though, trade between South Africa and its neighbours is heavily skewed and between 2005 and 2008 South Africa supplied nearly 44% of total intra-regional exports but took up only 11% of the imported goods available for neighbouring countries. In turn this means that the trade deficit for countries doing business with South Africa and has increased substantially.
For more:
