Pan-African real estate investment business Growthpoint Investec African Properties (GIAP), a partnership between Growthpoint Properties, Investec Asset Management and the International Finance Corporation, has started operations.
GIAP has secured capital commitments in excess of $212-million from several large institutional and international investors, with Growthpoint committing $50-million.
GIAP will invest in income-producing commercial real estate assets in select cities across the continent. Targeted investments will be further diversified by sector, with GIAP’s mandate spanning office, retail and industrial properties.
“For Growthpoint, the start of GIAP furthers our stated strategy to introduce new revenue streams with our funds management business. The African fund was first announced in 2015 and has taken some time to get to this point on account of economic and property cycles, so we are excited to get started,” Growthpoint CEO Norbert Sasse said in a statement on Wednesday.
Investments will be selected on their ability to support long-term rental growth from top-tier tenants and, thereby, generate sustainable investor returns.
GIAP is expected to aid in the development of local African real estate markets and to contribute to the wide-ranging developmental impact which real estate can have in such markets.
“A key issue for real estate developers across the continent has been their ability to efficiently exit completed assets so they can recycle and re-deploy capital. We are working closely with a number of players in the space who consider GIAP’s entry as an asset aggregator – a welcome development in this regard,” GIAP MD Thomas Reilly noted.