Standard Chartered Bank highlighted Africa’s growth potential and urged South Korean companies to advance into the market.

The global bank held a media round table, “Access Africa,” on Tuesday at Westin Chosun Hotel to promote trade between Korea and Africa and discuss how the bank can support businesses.

“The huge growth potential of Africa has drawn attention from the world. Korea’s trade volume with African countries is on the rise and we are seeing an increasing number of Korean companies venturing into Africa,” said Richard Hill, president and CEO of Standard Chartered Korea and Standard Chartered Bank Korea.

“As an international bank focused in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Standard Chartered is well placed to facilitate the development of trade flows between Korea and Africa.” 

Standard Chartered has 1,700 offices in 70 markets. In Africa, it has 170 branches in 16 countries. The bank has already helped out several Korean companies including Hyundai Engineering which won the bid for the world’s biggest geothermal plant project in Kenya.

The bank’s research showed that Korea’s trade with Africa increased almost fourfold from $5.7 billion in 2000 to $22.2 billion in 2011. The figure, however, is still small compared to that of other countries as it marked only 2.3 percent of Africa’s trade with the world. Officials said that Korean companies need to realize there is more potential to the “young and fast-growing” continent than imagined.

“If the world’s manpower is represented by China today, in the future I think it will be represented by Africa,” said Oh Suk-tae, senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank Korea.

Razia Khan, Standard Chartered Bank’s Regional Head of Research in Africa, pointed out that many African countries still managed to achieve double-digit growth despite the global economic crisis.

According to her research, China topped the list of the world’s fastest-growing economies with 8.74 percent growth and African countries including Ghana (8.55 percent), Zambia (7.67 percent), Rwanda (7.44 percent) and Niger (7.4 percent) were right on its heels.

“Africa, unlike Asia, is not as much dependent on cross-border lending. That makes African institutions somewhat more resilient to the global economic slowdowns that may result,” said Khan.

Richard Etemesi, the bank’s chief executive director of Kenya and East Africa, and Jean Paul Ndjemba, head of origination and client coverage at the bank’s Mauritius branch, each explained how Africa has overtaken Latin America as the world’s second-fastest growing mobile market and discussed the investment values of Mauritius, an island country in Africa.

By Park Min-young  (claire@heraldcorp.com)