#73, Andrew Alli - On investing, corporate governance and using Twitter

Building The Future Podcast

My guest today is Andrew Alli. Andrew is a real-life and virtual mentor to a lot of investment professionals in Africa. He is the Partner and Group CEO at Southbridge a pan-African financial advisory firm. Before then, he was the president and CEO of the Africa Finance Corporation, where he was responsible for over $4,5 billion of investments in 30 countries. Andrew's career is an inspiration and signpost to upcoming African investors like me, and it was a real pleasure to deep dive into how he got started and the lessons learnt till date. We also talked about how to reduce investment risk through temporal and geographical diversification in portfolio construction and the importance of a strong ESG framework in a weak socio-political environment that most African countries operate. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too.

In this episode, you'll learn

• The importance of numerate and logic skills as a good basis for career optionality
• What it means to be an investor in Africa, despite the obvious contradictions and challenges
• The role of boards in corporate governance
• The importance of ESG in mitigating investment risk

Recommended books

• World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History by Henry Kissinger

Andrew's twitter handle - @afalli