Deloitte launched the Africa Private Equity Survey, which highlights the growing opportunities for the asset class in East and West Africa, while Southern Africa still dominates transactional activity in the sector due to the maturity of the South African market.

The survey garnered 117 detailed responses between December 2014 and February 2015 from Private Equity (PE) players in the continent’s three largest economic regions: Southern, East and West Africa. While the report showed that PE activity across all three regions is expected to increase, 83% of West African respondents and 79% of East African respondents anticipate higher overall PE market activity in 2015 compared to a more muted, but still positive 67% in Southern Africa.

South Africa attracts more than half the continent’s PE transactional activity thanks to a combination of market size, ease of doing business and comparatively well-developed financial institutions and governance practices, while West and East Africa offer significant growth opportunities. Respondents in East and West Africa are also noticeably more optimistic about the economic prospects in those regions than their counterparts in Southern Africa.