Down In Africa: The Best Stocks For Africa's Oil Reign

It may have been the 1980s when the band Toto crooned about blessing "the rains down in Africa," but today there is a different kind of rain in Africa worth talking about. The kind that has profit potential and that means oil. Pointing out that Africa is home to OPEC members Algeria, Angola, Libya and Nigeria, some might argue the African oil story has been told. Many of the Western oil majors currently operate in Nigeria while Angola

. The same can be said of

. However, those nations aren't the end of Africa's oil story. They're more like the beginning. And there are more, possibly better ways to gain exposure to Africa's oil boom than with a traditional integrated oil stock. Here are a few choices to consider with one integrated name included.

We'll clear one thing up about Apache right off the bat: The company's Africa exposure is confined to Egypt and as investors saw in early 2011, that can be risky. While the company hasn't formally announced plans to expand in Africa, it has the financial and technological capabilities to do so if and when it wants to pursue more African exposure. Or investors can warm up to Apache because the company is the best at extracting oil from plays other companies have given up on and because this is could be a $130 stock once again. Apache trades for less than $96 today.

More than any other U.S. independent oil company, Anadarko has been willing to roll the dice on Africa. Thing is, the company rolls winners on the continent. A lot of them and there was more good news regarding Anadarko's

. The company operates in seven African nations overall.

For a while there it looked like Kosmos, which has only been public since May 2011, was going to be a pure play on Ghana's Jubilee field. However, the company recently it's going to spend $18 million looking for oil in Cameroon. And you thought Cameroon was just worth following when the World Cup rolls around. Apparently not.

Nearly a week ago, we mentioned Cobalt as one of the top ways of playing Angola's looming pre-salt boom. In the past five trading days, the stock is up almost 12%. The company also does business in the African nation of Gabon and the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico.

Few integrated oil names can boast of an African presence on par with BP's. According to its Web site, BP has done business on the continent for 80 years and has operations in 20 countries there. And that does NOT include Libya where the company is eagerly waiting to commence exploration activities. BP's yield is respectable, but the company does need to sell more assets to reach its desired target of $45 billion and it would not be surprising to see some of those sales happen in Africa.