Ghana's finance minister Kwabena Duffuor tells Brian Caplen how he is taking measures to ensure that his country's new oil wealth is spent on securing its long-term economic prosperity.

Afren's high-yield bond issue earlier this year attracted interest from emerging market investors as well as specialist energy players, two investor groups who rarely overlap in the bond markets.

Portuguese banks have found that investment in its former colony Angola has provided growth at a time when its own domestic market is facing recession. 

Nigeria's central bank governor Lamido Sanusi is The Banker's Central Bank Governor of the Year for 2011, both globally and for Africa. He explains his latest thinking on the reform agenda for Nigerian banking.

Despite a sovereign default and the impact of rolling popular uprisings across north Africa, many are increasingly hopeful about the prospects for Africa's debt markets, as improving economic conditions and growing international appetite look set to underpin further new issuance.

Conflict, corruption and too many failed businesses left it with a sclerotic banking sector with little appetite for risk, but South Sudan hopes its status as a newly created nation state will encourage investors to rethink their approach to an economy that hopes to underpin its regeneration with its rich reserves of oil. 

A banking sector ripe for development, family businesses ready to go global and resource-rich nations with cash aplenty have meant private equity firms are buzzing over Africa's untapped potential.

Large financial institutions from the Gulf are increasingly buying stakes in local banks in west Africa to tap into the region's sizeable Muslim population.