Here’s a roundup of some of the bigger deals I came across in these early days of April.

Diageo (DEO:US)

(P/E Ratio: 22.8; P/B Ratio: 7.4; Dividend Yield: 2.1%)

Quick! Outside of Ireland and Britain, what country consumes more Guinness than any other?

If you guessed Nigeria, you’re correct. But I’m thinking you cheated!

Few places outside the Old Sod appreciate a pint of Vitamin G more than Africa. In fact, 40% of all Guinness is brewed (and consumed) on the continent. And it’s only gaining in popularity. Guiness’s parent company, Diageo, announced this month that it would accelerate its 15% African sales growth by expanding into Angola, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company expects its liquor that retails in smaller, more affordable quantities than beer will drive sales growth in these new markets. Africa already contributes 14% of Diageo’s net sales.

GE (GE:US)

(P/E Ratio: 16.2; P/B Ratio: 1.8; Dividend Yield: 3.4%)

GE announced that it will help keep the lights on in Nigeria by helping to build a number of power plants. It will retain a 10%-15% ownership stake in the projects that it helps connect to the grid.

The company is no stranger to Nigeria. It has already supplied 100 gas turbines to the country’s energy sector and 25 locomotives to its rail network.

GE derived 6.7% of its total revenue (nearly $10 billion) from its operations in the Middle East and Africa in 2011. Revenue from the region increased 9% from its 2010 total.

Moneygram (MGI:US)

(P/E Ratio: N/A; P/B Ratio: N/A; Dividend Yield: N/A)

Money transfer agent Moneygram serves the huge number of Africans in the diaspora who send money back to the continent to support family or local businesses.

Africa is Moneygram’s fastest growing geographic segment. The company added nearly 6000 African locations in 2011, increasing its total count on the continent by 46%. Almost 7% of the company’s 267,000 money transfer agents are now located in Africa.

They’ve become a favorite on the continent for their low fees. You can transfer money virtually anywhere in Africa in a matter of minutes for $9.99. Its main competitor, Western Union, typically charges more than double that amount.

Western Union has, however, pioneered international money transfer via mobile phone through its partnership with Kenya. This is the wave of the future and Moneygram will need to ride it in order to stay competitive in this market.

Nestlé (NSRGY:US)

(P/E Ratio: 18.7; P/B Ratio: 3.1; Dividend Yield: 3.1%)

The packaged foods giant, Nestlé, announced this week that it would invest $14.5 million in Zimbabwe to improve the nation’s dairy production. A special focus would be to develop the capacity of small-scale farmers, those that own two dairy cows and produce 50 liters of milk per day. The company plans to distribute 4000 cows as part of the program.

Zimbabwe is the company’s third largest market in its Equatorial African region, but it has had a tense relationship with President Robert Mugabe and his political party ever since it refused to purchase milk from the president’s personal herd.

Nestlé’s African sales totaled $3.6 billion in 2010, and it plans to boost sales from emerging markets from 30% today to 45% by 2020.

Sanofi (SNY:US)

(P/E Ratio: 13.5; P/B Ratio: 1.4; Dividend Yield: 4.5%)

Sanofi has a big problem. Patents have nearly expired on many of the French pharmaceutical company’s most lucrative drugs, including Ambien, Plavix, Docetaxel, and Lovenox. Soon, generics will be pushing them off pharmacy shelves. It’s not unusual for sales of brand name drugs to plunge 50% or more in the year after patent expiration.

So, Sanofi plans a big push into emerging markets to transform this “patent cliff” into a “patent downslope.” Management announced last month that it intends to generate 40% of its sales from emerging markets by 2017 — up from 30% today.

Africa will be a big part of this expansion plan. It will soon begin the manufacture and sale of HIV/AIDs anti-retrovirals in South Africa. In total, the company plans to invest $157 million in Africa over the next five years.

But Sanofi is no Africa newbie. It has invested $107 million on the continent since 2007 and now operates seven factories in six countries. The company sold over $1.2 billion worth of drugs in Africa last year, roughly 3% of the corporation’s net sales.

Siemens (SI:US)

(P/E Ratio: 10.9; P/B Ratio: 1.9; Dividend Yield: 2.8%)

German industrial giant Siemens signed a $20.8 million deal to improve Kenya’s electricity transmission network, allowing the country to tap sources of renewable energy in the Rift Valley.

Few corporations have a longer history in Africa than Siemens. It first got down to business on the continent in 1857. In 2010, its South African sales totaled $767 million. Nigerian revenue came in at $124 million.

[Disclosure: I have no position in any stock mentioned in this article, and I have no intention of taking any within the next 72 hours.]

Slated panels will focus on interesting and timely topics like the burgeoning entertainment industry in Africa, mobile technology and the landscape for entrepreneurs, New African innovations, Agricultural innovations, and more.

With its rapid economic growth and young workforce, Africa is becoming the new frontier in the race for new markets. What is the next chapter in their growing relationship and how will it determine the shape of Africa’s future?

Slated keynote speakers are Former President of Zambia, His Excellency Rupiah Banda, George Monyemangene, the Consul General of South Africa to the US, Ben Murray Bruce, CEO of Silverbird Group, one of Africa’s largest entertainment companies, and Cina Lawson, Togo’s minister of Post and Telecommunications. Lawson was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in March 2012.

Panelists will include:

– Ndubuisi Ekekwe, founder, African Institution of Technology

– Tunde Kehinde, co-founder, Bandeka.com

– Mazunzo Chaponda, CTO, Mobile Financial Services Africa

– Sunil Tandon, head, Tata Teleservices Limited (TTL)

– Dr. Martyn Davies, director, China Africa Network

– Yasheng Huang, China Program Professor in International Management, MIT Sloan

– Robert Paarlberg, member, Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources

– Dave Ramaswamy, international investment aid, Karaturi Global

The conference will launch with a series of fast-paced “Vision Talks,” a forum designed to ignite the sparks of big ideas for business in Africa from front-of-the-pack leaders. Selected Africa Focused Entrepreneurs will also be presenting their business plans to win the final prize of the Enterprise Africa Business Plan competition.

Conference sponsors are Brand South Africa, the Boston Consulting Group, and the Legatum Center for Development & Entrepreneurship.

Looks to be a great opportunity to network with potential business partners and learn from some of the players in the tech and entertainment industry.  I’m looking forward to it.

In the meantime, major oil companies like Petrobras and Apache have expressed interest in very deep under water wells off the coast of Kenya.  According to the government official there are 46 total blocks available in Kenya.  36 are already licensed and 16 are available to be licensed.  Apparently,  there are expressions of interest for 13 of the 16 blocks available.  The final 3 blocks have no data attached to them.  Something the Ministry of Energy is working on, now.

Tullow Oil and Canada’s Africa Oil Corp. each have a 50 percent working interest in Kenya’s block 10BB.  The well had reached a depth of about 1,040 metres at the time of the discovery. Tullow, which has discovered recent commercial oil deposits in Uganda and Ghana, said it is drilling in a remote part of Kenya that has cost it about $40 million dollars.

“We are only halfway through the well. As we progress towards the target of 2,700 metres,” Martin Mbogo, the general manager for Tullow in Kenya, told reporters.

Tullow estimates it could spend up to $40 million on the drilling at the Ngamia 1 site.

“It may be a matter of months, sometimes years, before you can actually make the determinations that you have a commercial well. However, what we have is very encouraging,” Mbogo said.

These recent discoveries of oil in Africa could help countries increase their pace of development and improvement in standard of living for general populations if managed correctly.  The so called ‘Oil Curse’ which plagued countries like Nigeria and Angola for years serve as great lessons for how to avoid the curse.  Lets hope the Governments of Kenya, Uganda and Ghana are able to develop and channel this potential new source of wealth correctly.

According to one of Google’s blogs, they have been, over the past two years, working with market research firm Basis Research Ltd to understand people’s behaviors and attitudes when it comes to the internet.

They interview over 13,000 people in urban centres of 6 key African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda – to understand how and why people use the internet, what prevents non-users from coming online, and much more.

They built a new platform – InsightsAfrica.com to make the data publicly accessible to interested users. The site allows users to filter data using several fields like age, gender, country etc.

InsightsAfrica (www.insightsafrica.com) can provide answers to what would encourage young Kenyan women to come online more often via mobile phone, locations where Senegalese men most often access the internet via their computer, how long South African men spend online via mobile during an average session, the awareness of online activities amongst non-users in Ghana, Uganda, and Nigeria, and much more.

Users are also able to create their own customized datasets. For example you can focus on certain groups, change the layout of the graphs or download, save and share your graphs.

This comes at a time when many African countries are experiencing unheard of rates of penetration for mobile phone data usage and vastly improved data infrastructure for commercial and private usage.

I hope google keeps the data fresh, considering the pace at which the internet sector is growing. A welcome tool, though.

Agricon announced further that it has received cash of $500,000 and subscriptions for $110,000 toward its continuing private placement of up to 2 million shares for a total of $1,000,000.

The Company reported that it expects to file a form 8-K, commonly called a “super 8-K,” to report all details of the acquisition and the new company later this week. The Company believes that the acquisition ends the period of “shell company” status under SEC regulations because the Company is now an operating company.

The former and short-term CEO and board member, Peter Brincker Moller, has left the Company effective on completion of the CPGL acquisition. Agricon is informed that he will continue his affiliation with one of Agricon’s largest shareholders. Bob Bench will continue to serve as president and CFO and the Company is considering other candidates for the CEO position and for service on the Company’s Board.

Bob Bench said, “We are very appreciative of the shareholders of CPGL for their years of work in making this opportunity available to Agricon. We are also pleased that Global Green Capacity Ltd. CEO Torben Soerensen, who has worked endlessly to make this project happen, will continue to fill the position as one of the directors of CPGL.”

Agricon is a smaller reporting public company, and prior to its merger with CPGL was considered a “shell company” for SEC reporting purposes. Agricon has been actively seeking to merge with or acquire one or more private companies to create a foundation to grow and expand.

CPGL, a registered Ghana company, is based in Ghana West Africa and has negotiated a 50 year agricultural lease of 8,000 hectares (approximately 20,000 acres) of farm land, upon which they intend to cultivate rotational crops of sunflower, maize, canola and soya to produce low cholesterol cooking oil with byproducts like protein pellets for animal and fish feed and bio pellets for district heating and electricity generation. CPGL plans to acquire additional properties to increase its agricultural position in the future.

PacificWave Partners is acting as financial advisor to Agricon.

Nairobi and property around the coastal town of Mombasa not only made the list of fastest growing luxury real estate markets. They topped it, beating out cities like Miami, Cape Town, Bali and Vancouver. This had to raise some eye brows around the world. It certainly got my attention.

I knew the Nairobi and Mombasa real estate markets were hot, but I had no idea how well they were doing in comparison to other traditionally strong markets.

So, how did these Kenyan cities top the list? Here’s what the report provided as likely reasons for this growth… They called Kenya a safe haven. Yes, a ‘Safe Haven’. Historically, this has been true since Kenya has been surrounded by countries in conflict over the years. I remember going to school in Nairobi and often meeting children of very wealthy Ethiopians, Rwandans, Sudanese and Ugandans. In fact, I remember hearing about a former respected Tanzanian President saying and I’m paraphrasing, “Why send your kids to school in London, when Kenya is right here”.

They also cite Kenya’s rapid economic development as attracting domestic and international private equity, with emphasis on remittances flowing from Kenya’s increasingly affluent Diaspora. In fact this group is responsible for more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), then any other source including the traditional development institutions like the World Bank and IMF. I personally know of groups of individuals teaming up to get mortgages on land and homes, only to flip them and receive significantly high returns on their investment. There is also more access to capital marketed directly to the Diaspora by banks such as Equity and Chase banks.

The recent discovery of oil in one of Kenya’s poorest regions – Turkana, is likely to spur more speculative investment. Two neighboring countries also recently discovered oil, that make up the bulk of the East African Community (EAC). This economic block also has plans for a single currency. If the ‘Oil Curse’ does not manifest itself in this region, the chances are high, that the EAC could also find itself host to one of the fastest growing middle classes in the world. One to watch!

Real Estate continues to be the biggest wealth builder in the world. Africa, often considered the last frontier, is at the cusp of a rapid development phase, aided by new technologies. I predict that as leaders learn lessons from the Arab Spring, and infrastructure is improved and security is less of an issue, there will be several African cities on this list next year.

Its primary listing is on the London Stock Exchange and it is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of approximately £12.5 billion as of 23 December 2011, making it the 30th-largest company on the London Stock Exchange.^[6] It has a secondary listing on the Irish Stock Exchange.

Source: Wikipedia

“This morning, I have been informed by the Minister for Energy that our country has made a major breakthrough in oil exploration. This weekend, Tullow Oil, which has been prospecting for oil in block 10 BB in Turkana County, discovered oil in Ngamia-1 well, at a depth of between 846 and 1041 metres. They established over 20 metres of what is technically referred to as OIL-PAY. To establish commercial viability of this oil, they have to drill multiple wells,” said President Kibaki.

This puts Kenya in contention for commercially viable oil production that could quadruple GDP and speed its race to become a middle income economy by 2020.

Two other countries in East Africa that also recently discovered oil are Tanzania and Uganda.  Both are neighbors and members of the East African Community(EAC) Economic block. This discovery, if significant could place the EAC with a population larger than Nigeria(Africa’s most populace nation), at the forefront of Economic Development in Sub Saharan Africa.

The process to developing wells into economically viable enterprises will take at least 3 years.

Most African stock markets, as we saw last week, were every bit as volatile as US markets during the past five years. In fact, most were downright capricious.

Take a look at this five-year chart to get a sense of just how seasick Nigerian investors must feel. In the month of January 2009, the MSCI Nigeria Index plunged more than 41% in US Dollar terms. The next month it rebounded 26%. And then in March it swung 13% lower only to be followed by a 14% gain in April. Whew. I got nauseous just typing all that.

So why would anyone apart from an utter adrenaline junky even entertain the thought of investing in such markets?

The answer is diversification. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the more volatile assets that a portfolio contains the more stable it becomes. While some stocks zig, the others zag.

That’s one reason why fund managers like to invest in emerging market stocks. They tend to be less correlated with the S&P500, and, therefore, help smooth a portfolio’s performance. The less correlated a stock is to the overall portfolio, the greater its diversification benefit.

We measure correlation on a scale that ranges from -1.0 to 1.0. The closer the coefficient gets to either end of the spectrum, the stronger the correlation. A correlation coefficient of 0.9, for example, would indicate that two assets move nearly in lockstep with one another. A negative coefficient of -0.9, on the other hand, shows that the two assets react in almost opposite directions – when one drops, the other rises. Finally, a coefficient of 0.0 suggests the assets move completely independently of one another.

The chart below shows the correlation of monthly, currency-adjusted returns for a number of African indexes, the MSCI Emerging Market Index (EEM), and the S&P500 index since January 2007.

Note the strong correlation (0.83) between the S&P500 and the Emerging Market Index. The strength of the relationship shows just how interconnected global financial markets have become. It also suggests that adding emerging markets to a domestic stock portfolio provides a relatively limited diversification benefit.

South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange, with its 0.79 correlation to the S&P500, is a full-fledged emerging market. It is large and liquid, making it a favorite of fund managers desirous of exposure to the African growth story. The downside to this accessibility, however, is that it is likely to be hit first (and worst) when global markets take a tumble.

The next strongest correlation is between Kenya’s Nairobi Securities Exchange and its Ugandan counterpart. Investors from Kenya and Uganda can easily invest in one another’s markets. And landlocked Uganda is almost entirely dependent on trade routes through Kenya. Thus, Kenya’s 2008 political crisis hurt the Ugandan index more than it did the Kenyan stock market!

The markets of South African and Namibia also exhibit a strong relationship. The neighboring countries share a customs union, a currency linkage, and a lot of history. Thus their stock indexes tend to move in a concerted fashion.

Apart from those few relationships, however, African stock exchanges move together about as closely as do a herd of cats.

For example, the Nairobi Securities Exchange, one of the two largest African frontier markets, is essentially uncorrelated with its large West African counterpart, the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Tanzania’s tiny Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange moves to the beat of its own drummer. Botswana’s stock exchange isn’t strongly correlated with any other market, and doesn’t appear to be at all correlated with East African stock indexes. Finally, the Lusaka Stock Exchange in mining-dependent Zambia is (perhaps surprisingly) not correlated with similarly mining-focused South Africa.

So, as you can see, a few well-chosen African stocks can go a very long way toward reducing a portfolio’s volatility. Who’d have thunk it? Apparently, the real adrenaline junkies are those that don’t invest in Africa.

David Karangu could possibly be the only Kenyan immigrant to the United States that owns his own luxury plane.  A toy purchased with the spoils from years of hard work and focus in the US car industry.  The very straight forward and focused Karangu often talks about his ambition early on during his early years in Baltimore saying, “I will be a millionaire before I’m 30 years old.”  He says that is what he wanted more than anything else and he went for it.

He was born at Grady Hospital in in Atlanta in 1967 but grew up in Kenya. He later enrolled at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD where he studied Marketing. In 1985, he won an internship by the General Motors Corporation where he spent his summers working at Jerry’s Chevrolet. During this time, he developed a passion for the automobile industry. He worked in every department of the dealership and made up his mind that the automobile industry was going to be part of his future.

Upon graduating in 1987, he went to work for the Ford Motor Company in Jacksonville, FL. At Ford he spent the next eight years rising through the ranks and honing his skills while working with Ford dealerships throughout the state of Florida. He left Ford in 1995 and attended the NADA Dealer Academy. While attending the academy, he worked as a Sales Manager at a Lincoln dealership in Melbourne, Florida.

On November 1st, 1997 David opened his first dealership – Fairway Ford of Augusta in Georgia. At the tender age of 30 he was the youngest Ford Dealer in the United States. While there he achieved the following:

• Ebony Magazine 2001 Dealer of the Year
• Ford Motor Company 2005 President’s Award
• Black Enterprise Top 50 Dealers in the United States

On July 1, 2005 he opened Mercedes Benz of Augusta. This was to be the crown jewel of the new empire. From the beginning, it was a success, setting new records for a Mercedes dealership and David being one of five African Americans in History to own one.

April 2nd, 2007 was yet another milestone in his automotive career. He acquired a BMW dealership in Columbia, SC and renamed it BMW of Columbia. Along with it came other franchises – Ivory VW and Ivory Subaru. Black Enterprise Magazine has ranked the Ivory Auto Group as the 26th largest minority owned Dealership in the United States with Sales over $100 million Dollars annually.

In December 2007, David sold the entire Ivory Group of dealerships to Group 1 Auto Group. He retired at the age of 40 to pursue his lifelong dream of travelling throughout the world, he also became a chef and a luxury homebuilder.

Only July 14, 2010, he purchased the former Steve Rayman Chevrolet South and renamed it Ivory Chevrolet. This is yet another new beginning as he rebuilds his auto empire.

Throughout his journey, David has always believed in helping and motivating others. He has given motivational speeches to various groups throughout the US and to corporations in Kenya. He has donated funds in Kenya for HIV/Aids awareness, educational scholarships and orphanages.

July 28, 2005 was declared “David Karangu Day” by the Mayor of Augusta. In 2007, the Mayor of Augusta gave David an Honorary Key to the City. The Governor of the State of Georgia appointed him to the board of the Medical College of Georgia – the second largest hospital in the State for a three year term.

David Karangu currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his family and is an avid Real Estate investor in the United States and Kenya.