Africa: research, news, analysis

Industry and market research

• Passport

  • Useful for: consumer-related industry reports across a variety of geographies/countries. 

  • To begin, enter industry and geography keywords in search (ex: beauty Africa, or restaurants kenya).

  • Search tips: use concise keywords.  Go to "Analysis" section for full industry reports.

  • Also helpful: the "Consumer Lifestyles in X" reports ("Consumer Lifestyles in South Africa") and "Mobile in X".  Start typing consumer lifestyles and the name of country (or Mobile and the name of the country) to locate.

• EMIS

  • Useful for: emerging market info, including company info, news and niche industry reports.  Strong foreign language news component.

  • Search tips: At the top of the page under Region/Country, deselect all and reselect your GEO country.  Then enter industry or company keywords.  Can search in multiple languages.

Country information and data

• Economist Intelligence Unit

  • Useful for: In-depth country information covering recent economic and politicalt developments, risk and regulation, and the broad business environment.

  • Search Tip: Go to Data Tool to download specific indicators of interest, including indicators relating to consumer consumption, income, demographics, etc.

  • Oxford Business Group Country Reports

    • Useful for: in-depth analysis of broad industry categories within each country (ICT, Retail, Transportation, etc).  

 News

• Factiva

  • Useful for: targeted news search on specific industries, companies or countries

  • Search tips: Some useful Factiva search commands include hlp and atleast.  eg.,: hlp=africa and atleast3 consumers.

  • Select particular publications by region, industry or type: Open "Source" arrow and then select "Open Source Category Menu" and select sources by industry, language, region, type or A-Z: Select, "By Region" and then Select. Africa.

  • Also helpful: can limit by date, region, etc.  Can also search in multiple languages.

• EMIS (See above)​

• Ventures Africa

  • Useful for: news and analysis on African business, policy, innovation, and lifestyle.

• Africa Confidential

  • Useful for: in-depth news and analysis on significant political, economic and security developments across the continent

• Africa Capital Digest

  • News including original and curated content on private capital investment in Africa; Includes information useful for sourcing, evaluating and executing private equity, infrastructure and venture capital transactions in Africa.

• How We Made it In Africa

  • Includes in-depth interviews with African entrepreneurs and investors that reveal how they built their companies.

Company Information

• Capital IQ

  • Data on public and private companies, investment firms, capital transactions, and people worldwide. Provides sophisticated retrieval and personalization tools to create numerous reports. Includes information on over 160,000 African companies.

• Orbis

  • A global company database that is unique in breadth of geographies and extent of companies covered as well as the availability of private company financial information. Depth of information varies by country. Includes information on over 15,000,000 African companies.  

Additional Resources:

• ABI/ProQuest

  • Useful for: articles on business concepts such as strategy, business m