Laurium Capital’s Limpopo Africa Equity Fund is a long-only equity strategy designed to provide investors with focused exposure to listed African equity markets outside South Africa.
Since its inception on 1 January 2014, the Fund has aimed to outperform the African ex-South Africa equity universe through active management, high-conviction stock selection, and deep-dive fundamental company research.
2025 marked a particularly strong year, both for African equities more broadly and for the Fund specifically, reinforcing the value of Laurium’s approach.
Learn more about Laurium Capital’s Limpopo Africa Equity Fund.
The Limpopo Africa Equity Fund is US-dollar denominated and domiciled in the Cayman Islands, making it suitable for international and institutional investors seeking diversified exposure to African growth markets.
The Fund invests predominantly in publicly listed equities across Africa (excluding South Africa) and is not constrained by benchmark weightings.
This flexibility allows the portfolio to concentrate capital where Laurium identifies the most attractive risk-adjusted opportunities.
The strategy is long-only and fundamentally driven, focusing on companies with strong balance sheets, durable business models, and improving earnings trajectories.
African equity markets are often characterised by limited analyst coverage, episodic liquidity, and pronounced valuation dislocations.
Laurium’s investment process is designed to exploit these inefficiencies through bottom-up research combined with a pragmatic assessment of macroeconomic and political risk.
In 2025 the Limpopo Africa Equity Fund delivered exceptional absolute and relative performance.
The Fund returned a net 57.6% for the year, significantly outperforming the Africa ex-South Africa Index, which returned an estimated 55.1%. Source: Bloomberg\Laurium Capital, 2025.12.31
The Fund’s strong results were achieved against a backdrop of robust returns across several key African equity markets in 2025.
Improved macroeconomic stability in selected countries, easing inflation, firmer commodity prices, and periods of currency stabilisation supported equity market recoveries.
A stable to weaker USD was meaningful tailwind. Markets such as Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, and Morocco recorded strong gains, driven by a combination of earnings recovery and renewed investor interest.
That said, performance across the continent was uneven, with material dispersion between countries and sectors.
This divergence reinforced the importance of active country allocation and stock selection rather than passive exposure to the broad Africa ex-South Africa universe.
Outperformance in 2025 was driven primarily by stock-specific contributions, rather than broad market beta.
Resource stocks made a meaningful positive contribution to Fund returns, benefitting from a supportive gold price environment, strong operational delivery, and robust investor demand for quality precious-metals exposure.
Beyond resources, the portfolio benefited from selective exposure across financials, consumer-oriented businesses, and other high-quality franchises aligned with domestic growth trends across the continent.
Portfolio construction remained disciplined throughout the year, with position sizes actively managed to balance conviction with risk control.
The medium- to long-term outlook for African equities remains compelling, supported by a combination of structural growth drivers, improving financial conditions, and attractive valuations.
Africa is benefiting from structural themes that provide multi-decade growth tailwinds, including demographic expansion, urbanisation, rising financial inclusion, and increasing formalisation of economies.
These trends offer improved visibility on sustainable US-dollar earnings growth, particularly for companies well positioned in financial services, consumer sectors, telecommunications, and resources.
Importantly, these earnings prospects continue to be available at exceptionally attractive valuation levels, even after the strong performance seen in 2025.
Financial conditions are also improving. Credit spreads across several African markets are normalising, reflecting enhanced macroeconomic credibility and more orthodox fiscal and monetary policy frameworks.
This is translating into lower costs of capital for African companies, supporting balance sheet strength and enabling reinvestment for future growth.
After a prolonged period of outflows from emerging and frontier markets, capital flows are beginning to return, albeit gradually. Encouragingly, this recovery is being driven by both local investors and foreign capital.
While flows can provide an additional valuation tailwind, they are not a prerequisite for attractive returns, which remain grounded in earnings growth and valuation re-rating.
At the country level, economic reforms have left several key African economies in a materially stronger position than in previous cycles.
Currency liberalisation, subsidy reform, fiscal consolidation, and improved monetary policy frameworks have enhanced resilience and reduced external vulnerabilities.
Finally, Africa remains fundamentally a “stock picker’s market”. Equity markets across the continent are under-researched and often inefficient, creating significant dispersion between winners and losers.
For active managers with strong research capabilities, this environment continues to offer compelling opportunities to generate alpha through disciplined stock selection.
The Limpopo Africa Equity Fund is Section 65 approved under the Collective Investment Schemes Control Act (CISCA), which means that it can be marketed and sold directly to South African investors.
The Fund is classified as high risk, reflecting its exposure to emerging and frontier markets. Investors face currency volatility, political and regulatory risk, and periods of reduced market liquidity.
Returns can therefore be volatile over shorter horizons, particularly during global risk-off episodes.
The Fund is best suited to investors with a long-term investment horizon, a tolerance for volatility, and an understanding of the risks inherent in African equity markets.
Within a diversified portfolio, it can provide meaningful growth potential and diversification benefits.
The 2025 performance of Laurium’s Limpopo Africa Equity Fund underscores both the opportunity set within African equities and the value of active, research-driven management.
Delivering an estimated 66.0% gross return, outperforming the index, and translating this into strong net outcomes for both retail and institutional investors, the Fund demonstrated the impact of disciplined stock selection—supported by standout contributions from companies in a wide range of sectors and geographies.
With powerful structural tailwinds, improving macroeconomic fundamentals, and continued market inefficiencies, the Limpopo Africa Equity Fund remains well positioned to navigate the complexities of African equity markets and capture long-term value for investors.
For more information, visit www.lauriumcapital.com or email ir@lauriumcapital.com
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