This is the second of a three-part series with Richard China, CEO of International Green Structures, a sustainable housing development company looking to take advantage of the African market.

Deep value investor Tim Melvin spoke exclusively with China regarding the future direction of business operations for his company.

TM: You spent a lot of time in the last couple of years in Africa overseeing the projects, doing the negotiations, and basically getting the company up and running over there. Now the economists that I've been talking to recently tell me that they expect to see GDP growth throughout the African region of about 67 percent annually for the next 20 years. That's kind of like China over the last 20 years, sounds potentially very exciting.

Do you see that as likely? I mean, can they grow at that rate for sustained amount of time?

RC: Yes, I believe so and if you look at some of the smaller economies, Africa will probably grow at much faster rates. When you don't have much of a GDP, a high percentage is not hard to achieve, but yeah, I think you'll see those, on the places we've been.

The U.S. tends to be behind the Chinese and Europe as far as investing in Africa. But I think there's a lot of people that are seeing that it is the next frontier, and it's the place for them. As long as you find good local partners on the ground, it's a place that you can be very successful in business.

TM: Now, let's bring in our timeframe even a little bit shorter, say, the next three to five years. What type of housing market growth do you see throughout the region?

RC: Well, I can tell you this: In Kenya, just Kenya alone, they have a shortage now of probably two million houses which is growing by 300,000 annually. Now their housing ministry, which we work with very closely, has a plan to do 300,000 houses over the next four years. I told the housing minister we do not view a competition in these markets as a problem because the demand is just so significant.

In Ghana there's a demand of 1.5 million houses. Nigeria has a ton, somewhere between to 12 to 16 million houses, Uganda has a demand of two million houses growing to eight by 2020. So we feel that the market is limitless.

TM: Wow! So there's really plenty of demand and need for them. From your time on the ground, what sectors of the African economy besides housing do you think are attractive investments for the next five to 10 years, let's say?

We've now been in and out of Africa coming up in three years and we're just really starting our first fields there. We felt that the persistence and the continued investment is about to pay off. We think that once it starts to pay off it will be limitless for us. We really do.

TM: Now, speaking of infrastructure, that's a huge concern when you're investing in a frontier market like Africa. How was the infrastructure there; the electric plants, the grid, transportation services, how was all that in the parts of Africa you're doing business in?

RC: Well, different places are different. The urban areas are nowhere near adequate. In Uganda I believe there's only 12 percent of the people have electricity there so, you know, it's a pretty huge demand. At the same time, they don't have the same power requirements that we have in the U.S., but all the money is going towards infrastructure in these countries right now.

So, you know, it sort of works in reverse in a lot of cases.

Stay tuned for the third part of this three-part series where Richard China discusses the African beer market and his final thoughts on U.S. investment in Africa.

Image credit: www.SuperCar-RoadTrip.fr, Flickr