General Electric sees Africa revenue growing
NAIROBI, April 18 (Reuters) - General Electric Co (GE.N) expects revenue to rise in Africa due to the infrastructure demands of the continent's growing economies, a senior official said on Friday.
"Our business in Africa in the first quarter of 2008, compared to 2007, grew by 114 percent (and) we expect this growth to continue," GE's Africa boss Yibrah Tesfazghi told reporters, without giving details.
Yibrah said Africa contributed $2.5 billion to the company's total revenue of $172 billion in 2007, a sum he described as small but which he expected to increase.
"Look at the potential and look at the needs of the African continent," he said. "The whole continent is booming ... and we don't have infrastructure."
United Nations figures show African economies grew by an average 6.2 percent last year.
GE, the second-largest company in the United States by market capitalisation, is now present in 16 African countries compared with two in 2003. Its interests in transport, energy, oil and gas, security and healthcare stretch from Cape Town to Algiers.
Yibrah said Africa has made advances in democracy thus lowering the risk of doing business on the continent.
"Most of the countries have solved their (political) problems. If all this political and governance improvement cannot give us confidence, then what else?" he said.
Yibrah was speaking in Kenya, where stability is returning after a wave of post-election violence killed at least 1,200 people, uprooted 300,000 more and hit key economic sectors.
Despite the unrest, which many Kenyans hope has ended with Sunday's naming of a power-sharing cabinet, Yibrah said GE had never contemplated pulling out of the east African nation. (Editing by David Holmes) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/ )
