The Rush for Africa
Posted By Rob Millard - 0 Comments -
The "rush" for sub-Saharan Africa's legal services market is being dominated by two international firms. South African firms are juggling a frenetic local market with the need to serve their clients who are expanding northwards into Africa, and several other internationals are also casting an increasingly interested eye over the previously "dark continent."
Denton Wilde Sapte have long had their African Association, which by all accounts has served both its members and their clients well over the years. It was dealt a blow by the departure of Charles Morrison, the partner that oversaw it from London, to DLA Piper Rudnick about two years ago. Since then, DLA Piper Rudnick has made impressive inroads into the continent, too. It's association with the Portugese firm's Miranda Correia Amendoeira & Associados's African network, the Miranda Alliance, places it in a position of virtual dominance in the oil rich lusophone countries of the African west coast, and it recently secured one of South Africa's top commercial firms, Cliffe Dekker, into its stable. The most recent addition has been the Tanzanian firm IMMMA Advocates (IMMMA.) Denton Wilde Sapte opened an office itself in Johannesburg in April, to serve as a base not only for its own lawyers but also for its African association members, and is reported to be currently negotiating with a Nigerian firm to join their Association too.
Some South African firms have also been actively building their pan-African businesses, although the veritable ocean of work in South Africa itself makes it less urgent to look beyond the local market. Werksmans has its Lex Africa alliance and Deneys Reitz its Africa Legal. Edward Nathan and Sonnenberg Hoffmann Galombik (currently in merger discussions) and also Webber Wentzel Bowens and Bowman Gilfillan have active business aspirations north of the Limpopo. So do several of the smaller South African firms, although they do not have the resources that the large firms do, to drive business development. There are a range of very reputable and capable local firms in several other African countries too.
White & Case, LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae and mining boutique Fasken Martineau all have offices in Johannesburg, and are all also very active north of the Limpopo River. Many more international firms operate by "parachuting" lawyers into Africa from London, New York, Houston, Paris or other centres.
The South African economy has never been stronger and despite Africa's undeniable warts like AIDS and a few residual but horrific regional wars, the continent is at last pulling itself out of the nightmare that characterized the second half of the twentieth century. With oil reserves at several trillion dollars at a time when the entire continent's GDP is currently less than one trillion, it seems that far more opportunities will emerge for firms with a frontier spirit.
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