A private desk, built around counterparties

Tawira Africa Limited operates as Tawira Africa Connect. The desk covers eight markets, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, Morocco and Côte d’Ivoire, and twenty-one sectors, from energy and infrastructure through to the creative economy.

We work with institutional funds, development finance institutions, corporates entering a new market, and family offices taking their first African position. What they have in common is that the decision to look at Africa has already been made, and what is missing is the specifics: who the counterparty is, whether the regulator will move, what the structure has to look like, and what the risk actually is rather than what the risk rating says.

Why the intermediation gap exists

African markets are not short of opportunity or of capital. They are short of the layer between the two. A fund in London can price a Nigerian asset; what it cannot do from London is verify the promoter, read the regulator, or tell whether a licence will be issued in six weeks or sixteen months. That is a presence problem, not an analytical one, which is why the desk is staffed in the markets rather than around them.

On the continental picture

50 of 54 of 54 African Union members have ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area, but only around 25 have gazetted the tariff schedules that make it operational (AfCFTA implementation tracking, 2026). The distinction between a signed agreement and an implemented one is the kind of detail that decides whether a regional distribution thesis works, and it is the reason we publish sourced figures rather than continental narratives.