The Prepaid Economy: African Edition

Veteran emerging market investor Mark Mobius is looking for bargains in Nigeria as others take fright at violence in Africa’s most populous country, where the Islamist sect Boko Haram has killed nearly 1,000 people since 2009. Mobius, who oversees $44 billion as chairman of Franklin Templeton’s Emerging Markets Group, said bomb and gun attacks in cities such as Abuja and Kano in recent months were “isolated incidents”.

“It’s a huge country,” he told Reuters at an investment conference in Ghana. “You can still do business, even when you have a lot of turmoil.

In Thailand, during the problems that they had, we continued to invest, and it turned out to be very, very good.

“It doesn’t mean that we’re not aware of it. We look at it very carefully. Very often in these kinds of turmoil you can get some bargains.”