Southeast Asia’s Rising Economic Influence in Africa

Southeast Asia firms have quietly produced some of the most ambitious corporate ventures in Africa. While ASEAN nations themselves are emerging economies, several of its leading firms have made multi-billion-dollar inroads on the continent. Taken together, Olam Group of Singapore, Viettel Group of Vietnam, and ICTSI of the Philippines employ more than 20,000 people in Africa, control critical supply chains from ports to telecoms, and have invested well over $3-4 billion in cumulative capital.

These ASEAN firms grew up in challenging environments at home, shaping an approach to doing business suited to markets with limited infrastructure, complex regulations, and price-sensitive consumers. Such realities in Africa often deter Western multinationals, but for ASEAN corporates they are familiar terrain. Their ability to build businesses in constrained settings translates effectively into Africa, where rapid population growth, resource potential, and expanding consumer demand mirror earlier phases of Southeast Asia’s own development.

With Africa accounting for only about 2.2% of ASEAN’s international trade, the scope to deepen economic and investment ties remains substantial. As the post-Bretton-Woods order takes root, South-South trade is likely to expand, making the Africa-ASEAN relationship even more strategic than it is now.

Olam Group (Singapore)

According to Enterprise Singapore, total trade between Singapore and Africa reached $14.5 billion in 2022, with cumulative investments topping $23 billion by the end of 2021. The FDI into Africa is concentrated in agribusiness, ports and logistics, oil and gas services, and manufacturing, with firms like Olam, Wilmar, Tolaram, and ICTSI leading the way. It should be noted that as an established global financial hub, a share of these capital flows are routed through Singapore rather than originating from there directly.

Olam is a major Singapore-based agribusiness group, though it was originally founded in Nigeria in 1989 as a cashew trading firm by the Kewalram Chanrai Group, an Indian-owned trading house. The company later listed in Singapore to secure a more favorable base for global expansion and access to capital markets. Today, Olam has operated in over 70 countries. A 2016 Bloomberg article discussing it’s $150 million investment in Nigeria noted that roughly 16% of its then $20.6 billion in revenues came from Africa, underscoring the continent’s importance in its portfolio.

Today, Olam employs around 9,600 people across eight countries in Africa including Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Senegal, South Africa, and Mozambique. Its primary Africa-related business activities involve cocoa, cashew, and rice sourcing and processing, alongside managing its extensive industrial infrastructure. Olam has previously committed to investing $2.2 billion on the continent, and while the company does not publish updated figures, external estimates suggest that actual investments to date are closer to $1 billion.

One of Olam’s most significant ventures in Africa is the Nkok Special Economic Zone in Gabon, which Olam developed in partnership with the Gabonese government and Africa Finance Corporation. Launched in 2010, the project has attracted nearly $600 million in infrastructure investment, alongside an additional $120 million for the New Owendo International Port, making it a flagship example of large-scale industrial ecosystem building in Africa.

Viettel Group (Vietnam)

Where Olam represents supply chains and agriculture, Viettel embodies connectivity through mobile networks. Vietnam’s state-owned telecom giant (57% market share in Vietnam) entered Africa in 2012 with a strategy developed at home, which was to provide affordable, mass-market connectivity in underserved rural areas. The company saw parallels in Africa to its own markets in the early 2000s: large populations with little access to mobile services, governments keen to expand coverage, and a scarcity of infrastructure in secondary cities and rural districts.

Viettel’s first African venture was Mozambique, where it launched Movitel. The company deployed over 15,000 miles (25,000 km) of fiber optic cable and thousands of towers to achieve national coverage. By targeting rural areas often ignored by competitors, Movitel gained millions of subscribers and built a reputation as a market disruptor. Today it has nearly 12 million users, holds the top market share in Mozambique, and its e-Mola wallet has grown to about 6 million users.

Building on its success in Mozambique, Viettel entered Tanzania with Halotel, investing nearly $1 billion to roll out 11,000 miles (18,000 km) of fiber and thousands of towers, delivering coverage across all regions of the country. By extending service into underserved areas, Halotel quickly established itself as a national operator and one of Viettel’s most important overseas markets. Today, the company holds a 13% market share in Tanzania’s competitive mobile telecommunications sector, and a 9% share in the mobile money market through its HaloPesa service, serving 3.8 million users.

Elsewhere in Africa, Viettel’s Lumitel brand in Burundi has captured over 60% of the market, while in Cameroon its Nexttel unit, once a strong challenger, has been slowed by shareholder disputes. Viettel’s African businesses currently serve tens of millions of subscribers, with Mozambique and Tanzania ranking among its most profitable overseas markets. It has become one of Africa’s most important non-Western, non-Chinese telecom players.

ICTSI (Philippines)

The Philippines’ International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) represents another pillar of Africa’s development: logistics and ports. Founded in Manila in 1988, ICTSI has built its global strategy around securing long-term concessions in emerging markets where port infrastructure is underdeveloped but trade volumes are growing. Africa, with its persistent logistics bottlenecks and rising container traffic, was a natural fit for this model.

ICTSI entered Africa in 2005 through a concession to operate the container terminal at Toamasina in Madagascar, the island’s principal maritime gateway handling nearly 90% of the country’s container traffic. The concession, originally due to expire in 2025, was extended to 2040 in 2021, and is being supported by a $680 million investment to modernize the facilities.

The company later established the Matadi Gateway Terminal in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first deep-water terminal on the Congo River. ICTSI also secured a 25-year concession in Kribi, Cameroon, where it manages a multi-purpose container terminal, and in Nigeria it operates facilities at Onne port, serving the oil and gas hub of Port Harcourt. Each of these projects required heavy upfront capital, with returns designed to accrue over decades as regional trade volumes grow. Exactly the type of greenfield FDI Africa requires to develop.

More recently, ICTSI has looked to expand into Africa’s largest trade hubs. In 2023, it was named the preferred bidder for a 25-year joint venture to develop and operate Durban’s DCT Pier 2 in South Africa, one of the busiest ports on the continent. Although legal disputes and regulatory hindrances have delayed progress, the move signals ICTSI’s continued ambition to move further into Africa’s most strategic corridors.

Africa remains a smaller contributor to ICTSI’s global earnings compared with the company’s Asian and Latin American portfolios, but its EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) revenues reached $143 million in Q1 2025, up nearly 24% year on year.