Investopia and Business Finland to explore opportunities in Africa

The global investment platform, Investopia, has revealed one of the key outcomes of its annual conference held on 2nd-3rd March 2023 in Abu Dhabi, which is the partnership with “Business Finland”, the government organisation for innovation funding and trade, travel and investment promotion, in order to explore investment opportunities in Africa.

The partnership between the Investopia platform and a leading economic organisation from Finland aims to explore new economic prospects across various regions worldwide, with particular emphasis on Africa. Investopia 2023 conference witnessed a notable and influential presence of Finnish enterprises and organisations through their active participation in the conference’s sessions and discussions, in addition to a roundtable event, attended by global business leaders.

In this occasion, Timo Metsä-Tokila, Executive Director and CFO of Business Finland, stated, “The increasing need for sustainable solutions generates new and rapidly growing market opportunities. Globally, Finland is becoming one of the most sought-after partners in future shaping solutions. Business Finland facilitates sustainability-driven, large-scale projects answering to societal and market needs. The projects simultaneously induce innovations, support the realisation of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and create end-customer value. Value is created in synergy between large companies, small innovative companies, and research organisations - something that relates well to what Investopia is promoting.”

Metsä-Tokila added, “Such approach, with strong focus on sustainability, and value-add creating capabilities provides benefits to the investors and positive impact on the societies and environment.” Victoria Ivanova, Senior Advisor of Business Finland, commented, “We are very excited to be part of Investopia - the platform that has big potential to deliver truly global impact. Already within this edition we are bringing together world-class Finnish technologies; commercial, innovative and SDG driven projects from Africa and global investment community.”

In light of this partnership, Business Finland organised a roundtable, which was attended by global business leaders, and discussed the African investment opportunities that utilise Finnish transformative technologies and innovative solutions to boost African economies ridden with high unemployment, digital divide and decreasing productivity.

The roundtable shed light on two unique African growth opportunities, including Isiswe, which is building commercially viable, fast and affordable broadband connectivity to densely populated urban growth areas. The second opportunity is Prieska copper-zinc mining project, which is developing a smart and sustainable mine with the reopening of a mothballed copper-zinc mine and utilising various Finnish value-adding offerings and latest technologies, in order to create the very first carbon-neutral mining operation.