Mortgages Rising

Barney Jopson at the FT reports on the continent's developing mortgage industry:

The African mortgage sector remains tiny. In spite of huge pent-up demand, mortgages are available only in a dozen or so countries and the barriers to making them a mass-market product are formidable – not least the murkiness of property rights across much of the continent. “Maybe the hype exceeds the reality, but banks are at least trying to roll out products,” says Rod Evison, head of the Africa department at CDC, a private equity fund-of-funds specialising in emerging markets...The market’s boundaries are being pushed by young innovators such as Equity Bank, which is using capital secured last year when Helios, the London private equity group, paid Ks11bn for 25 per cent of the group. Banque Commerciale du Rwanda, which is owned by Actis, another London-based private equity group, has just sold the country’s maiden corporate bond to fund its nascent mortgage business...