Abu Dhabi as a Strategic Base for Africa-Focused Capital
Kessner Capital Management, a London-headquartered investment firm, is positioning Abu Dhabi as a central node in its strategy. The firm is building a transcontinental investment corridor connecting Gulf institutional capital to high-impact opportunities across key African markets.
Abu Dhabi’s regulatory stability, financial infrastructure, and geographic proximity to Africa made it a logical choice for Kessner’s regional presence. In partnership with a UAE-based family office, the firm is establishing a senior leadership base in the Emirate, while maintaining core operations in London.
Ghana Gold Infrastructure: First Major Deployment
Kessner’s first transaction reflects its preference for real-economy sectors. The firm has extended a loan facility to Harlequin International Ghana, an industrial engineering company. Harlequin supports ore-processing infrastructure for prominent gold miners. The financing aims to upgrade operational capacity at multiple mining sites.
This investment is strategic: gold remains a reliable asset class in emerging markets, offering both hedging value and deep local economic linkage. By backing a Ghanaian mid-cap engineering firm, Kessner is entering the extractive value chain not through mining licenses, but through industrial services that deliver jobs, cash flow, and regional resilience.
Sectoral Diversification with Pan-African Ambitions
While gold infrastructure is a launchpad, Kessner Capital’s pipeline spans sectors such as agriculture, telecoms, healthcare, logistics, and clean energy. The firm targets countries with robust legal systems and macroeconomic potential, including Nigeria, Kenya, Angola, and Ivory Coast.
The firm’s strategy revolves around three pillars: delivering risk-adjusted returns, enabling local impact, and building financial bridges between frontier markets and institutional capital sources.
Can new regional strategies deliver risk-adjusted returns in markets where liquidity, governance and scale remain structurally fragmented?
