Majority of what economists may call ‘owners of capital’, the elderly wealthy men, are without doubt long term investors. Value investing is a practice somewhat lost on the young generation, especially those living in urban areas. It involves envisioning the outcome of your future investment. It entails putting your money in investments whose real worth and value can only be enjoyed at a later date.To be a good value investor, you have to know something that majority of people don’t. It is the uncommon knowledge that you will thrive on. You must be able to see years ahead and play out future scenarios. Consequently you must possess a clear sense while assessing business opportunities, shares and other buys. People like Warren Buffet are value investors. They assess a company’s growth prospects in the next couple of decades, buy and hold the shares, which could be selling at a very low price. Eventually, if the predictions were correct, the company grows in profitability and market capitalisation. Wise buyers benefit a lot. The same applies for businessmen who put their money in developing countries. Opportunities for value investing abound for tangible assets. Take one sector, like education, for an example. You have seen all these qualified students who miss out on university because of the low admission capacity. You could build a university and you will have students enrolling. But that will cost you an arm and a leg. How about helping the existing universities increase their enrolment. How? Well, universities admit students based on the institution’s bed-capacity. If a certain university has 2,000 beds, it can only accommodate that number of students in the regular program. As a value investor, you can enable the university to increase its enrolment by 25 per cent by buying the land next or close to the institution, and building a hostel annexe for 500 students. The charges should be computed similarly to the university accommodation rate so there would be no parity. Better still, you can enter into a memorandum of understanding with the university to be giving you a single cheque once students pay, part of which could actually be coming from Student Financing Agency in Rwanda (SFAR). Of course land adjacent to the major universities is already constructed on or too expensive. But there are several private universities that are coming up now all over the country and that is where you need to cast your net. They may be struggling for students and cash flow to stay afloat right now, but in15 years’ time, they will be big. That’s just one sector and one minor example. If you look around, you will see many opportunities that you can take advantage of now before everybody starts jumping on the bandwagon. Vision 2020 would be a good indicator on which areas to look for hidden opportunities dedantos2002@yahoo.com
