Global Investing 101: Africa and the Middle East

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As we await the launch of Motley Fool Global Gains, our new international investing service, we are taking a look back at some of our best international stock ideas. This article was originally published on June 12, 2006.

In the pantheon of international investing, if this were a World Cup, Africa and the Middle East would be the "team" that has a few really nice players, but not a roster that would give it a chance at winning the whole enchilada.

Perhaps I should say the "whole pita" or the "whole injera" or something more geographically appropriate. However, as someone who relishes the thought of digging in places other people might want to avoid, I was pretty sure that I would be able to find some real value in Africa and the Middle East. Besides, everyone else here seems to have forgotten that the expanse of Africa and the Middle East contains two ideally situated, rapidly growing, developed economies with robust levels of minority shareholder protection.

Yes, in this region there's Israel and South Africa. There's also Turkey, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with plenty of connection to Europe. These markets are also somewhat easy to track: Of the 66 countries that make up Africa and the Middle East, those are the only three countries that have companies listed on the three major U.S. exchanges. Israel is a burgeoning financial and technological powerhouse. South Africa is king of the precious-metals and diamond-mining businesses. And Turkey has a cellular company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Africa and the Middle East have more than their fair share of economic basket cases, to be sure. Congo? Disastrous. Somalia? May or may not have a government, and either way, it's at minimum a failed state. Zimbabwe has been run into the ground by policies that are so destructive and random that the country might have been better off if economic policymaking was done using Yahtzee dice and a highly trained chinchilla. These countries have no direct exposure to the major U.S. exchanges.

Unfortunately, neither do a number of smaller countries that have rapid growth rates and burgeoning economies. Botswana, for example, has recently held a higher sovereign debt rating than Japan. Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and Namibia offer developing economies and burgeoning local stock exchanges. And across the Red Sea, the stock markets in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been among the fastest-rising in the world before a recent swoon. Unfortunately, none of these markets is functionally open to international investors. Lebanon has corruption problems galore, which serve to impair its standing globally. However, Beirut has been a center for commerce and banking in the region for millennia, and the nation's emergence from decades of crippling civil war has created awesome opportunities.

Cracks are opening. Qatar Telecom is available on the London Stock Exchange, and billionaire Saudi Prince al-Waleed's Kingdom Hotels is exploring the ability to list overseas as well.

What Africa and the Middle East has, in a quantity that is unequaled anywhere else in the world, is potential. This is the most mineral-rich region in the world, and plenty of companies do enormous levels of work here, from Royal Dutch Petroleum (NYSE: RDS-A) and its African and Middle Eastern oil production resources to VaalcoEnergy (AMEX: EGY) and its oil-exploration rights off the coast of the West African country of Gabon. If you want to speak of potential for growth, in Africa it's nearly limitless.

At the same time, as investors we cannot simply put our money into "potential." With the opening up of Africa to both the South African and (to a smaller degree) Israeli companies, growth in Africa is best tapped using companies that know the ground but are based in countries with sufficient shareholder protections. AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU), a $10 billion South African gold-mining concern, has developed mines and interests throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and paper and pulp giant Sappi (NYSE: SPP) has done the same.

Gold? Paper? Beyond offering a proxy for the great currency debasement arguments circling the developing world, these might not offer the most exciting potential for investors. Look to the north, in Israel, and you'll find the foreign country that has more companies listed in the U.S. than any other. Many of these companies, like Answers (Nasdaq: ANSW), and Checkpoint Software (Nasdaq: CHKP), are high-tech concerns with little exposure to the Israeli economy, while KoorIndustries (NYSE: KOR) is a conglomerate with diverse interests in telecommunications, agriculture, and venture capital.

Africa and the Middle East may not be the first regions people think of when they decide to look for overseas exposure. This is admittedly prudent. But between the diverse powerhouse economies of Israel and South Africa, plus the myriad ways of investing in the region through foreign companies operating there, you're going to see that plenty of that raw potential is going to turn into profits in the next decade.

Interested in international investing? Click here for a special free report from the Global Gains team.

Fool sector head Joey Khattab updated this article, which was written by Bill Mann. Joey does not own any shares of the companies mentioned. The Fool has a disclosure policy nearly as old as the Nile River.