This is the first quarterly report of the Cambridge Associates LLC African Private Equity and Venture Capital Index, a collaboration between the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA) and Cambridge Associates, the global investment advisor that maintains databases and tracks performance data of private investments around the world.

In the past, private offerings of alternative investment funds (“AIFs”) in the EEA have not required the burdensome regulations that accompany public offerings. The implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive 2011/161/EU will substantially change the regulatory considerations underlying previous private placements in the EEA.

This joint research piece, looking at value creation through exit deals across Africa, provides an answer to the commonly asked question “are there exits in Africa?” The continent’s stock markets, other than the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, are still very small and relatively illiquid, and the intermediary networks remain far from complete across the region. As a result, a widely held perception is that exits are hard to achieve and that therefore they are few in number. However, our analysis points to a higher level of exit activity than might be expected.