“The question is not whether offices are missing, but whether offices a multinational can sign for are missing.”
A diagnosis often wrongly framed
The major West African metropolitan areas are not short of office space. They are short of space that simultaneously meets the security, power continuity, connectivity, environmental certification and management quality standards that international and large local tenants require.
That distinction is decisive for the investor: it explains why a high vacancy rate on the older stock coexists, in the same city, with waiting lists on the few institutional-quality assets.
What tenants actually sign for
In our transactions, the decisive criteria for an anchor tenant are, in order: reliability of the power supply, quality of the security arrangements, parking capacity and certified environmental performance.
Headline rent comes only after that. An asset able to guarantee those four elements earns a durable premium and markedly longer leases.
Certification as a financial tool
Environmental certification — EDGE in particular — is often seen as a cost. Our experience suggests the opposite: it unlocks access to development finance institution funding, improves credit terms and widens the pool of eligible tenants.
On our Abidjan scheme it was a direct driver of pre-letting.
This document reflects the opinion of its author at the date of publication. It constitutes neither an offer, nor a recommendation, nor investment advice.