Michiel Timmerman is founder and managing partner at Mbuyu Capital Partners, which is an Africa focused investment boutique focused on financial services and agriculture, as well as Equity for Africa and EFTA, both focused on equipment leasing in Tanzania. He previously held a series of CIO roles across various asset management businesses in the City of London, including Ignis Asset Managemnent, where we met.

Our conversation covers Michiel’s early scientific education and how that hypothesis based scientific method informs his approach to investing. We then discuss how he came upon the SME investment opportunity in Africa somewhat by accident. While he had prepared for failure – he had not prepared for success, and this brought its own complications.

We look at the backdrop to investing in Africa, bust some myths associated with it, and describe some of the unique challenges (and opportunities) of investing in the region.