Why patient capital stays scarce where it would be most useful

Most investment vehicles operating in African and emerging Asian markets run on seven to ten year lives, of which three to four years are spent deploying. In practice the real holding window often shrinks to four or five years.

Yet the projects that create the most value in these markets — a business district, a logistics terminal, an agri-industrial processing unit — rarely reach steady state before five to seven years. The gap is structural, and it is paid for at exit.

We consistently see the same signals in the files we take over: works programmes compressed to meet an exit timetable, leases signed on degraded terms to show an occupancy rate, disposals executed at the worst point in the local cycle.

None of those decisions is irrational taken in isolation. All become so when they answer a liquidity constraint that has nothing to do with the asset itself.

A seven to twelve year horizon changes every trade-off. It allows heavy capital works whose payback is spread out, refusing a mediocre tenant, waiting for a favourable refinancing window, or letting a management team prove itself.

It also changes the nature of the relationship with local partners. An investor whose horizon is known and long is treated differently: better entry terms, better access to the pipeline and more latitude when difficulties arise.

This approach has a cost. It requires capital whose maturity is not constrained, the ability to hold assets that do not appreciate linearly, and a markedly stricter selection discipline at entry: you do not commit for ten years to an asset you are not sure about.

That is precisely why we turn down the vast majority of the files we review. Selectivity is not a posture: it is the condition of patience.