Haute 100 Update: Mikhail Prokhorov’s Renaissance Group Plans Elaborate Investments in Africa

Russia’s Renaissance Group – jointly owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov and New Zealand’s Stephen Jennings – is planning elaborate investment plans in Africa, which would fortify the company’s foothold across the continent and strengthen its potential economic renaissance.

The pan-emerging markets investment bank has plans to build a 6,400-acre city in the Democratic Republic of Congo in addition to its $5 billion Tatu City that the company is currently building in Kenya.

The plans signify a major strategic boost in Africa and is further evidence of an increasing number of Russian firms that are shifting their focus more on the country’s economic growth and emerging urban middle class rather than its extractive industries.

The group also revealed plans for a new urban center after securing the land just outside of Lubumbashi, the country’s second-largest city, as well as considering similar projects in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Rwanda.

Arnold Meyer, Renaissance Partners’ managing director in charge of their real estate in Africa, explained, “The West has peaked in terms of economic growth and the new markets are in Africa, and the main drivers of this growth in Africa are going to be cities.”

Although it remains undisclosed as to exactly how much the group’s Lubumbashi project will cost, it is said to be more than double the size of Tatu City, the $5 billion, 2,500-acre center that the firm is building from scratch outside of Nairobi. Tatu City will function as in independent municipality and is reported to house 62,000 residents, a stadium, technology park, hospital, shops, office towers, and playgrounds.

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