Group FiveEast and west Africa targeted

Group Five was seeking a toehold in west and east Africa, its chief executive said yesterday, as South Africa’s fourth-largest construction firm looks to the rest of the continent to offset slow growth at home. “We see west Africa as a big growth area for us,” Mike Upton told the Reuters Africa Investment Summit. “West Africa for us is growing into a very viable broad-based market, not just a project opportunity region.” Upton said the discovery of oil and gas in Kenya and Uganda also made east Africa a likely target for the company to put down permanent roots. He gave no timelines for the African expansion plans. The shares, which are down 27 percent since late 2009, fell 0.6 percent to R30.81 yesterday. – Reuters