Economic meltdown, coupled with forex scarcity, have resulted in about 44 private equity companies exiting their investments in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt markets last year. Ernst & Young (EY) and the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA) disclosed this in their latest reports on African investments.

The report, which was monitored on Ernst & Young’s website, said that many private equity companies cashed out their investments in Africa last year than any other time as currencies across the continent fell against a globally stronger dollar.

The report, titled: “How private equity investors create value” on the stable of Ernst & Young (EY) and the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA), showed that investors exited 44 companies in 2015, more than the 39 exits recorded in the previous two years, which was a nine-year high. According to the report, South Africa accounted for 39 per cent of the exits, 11 per cent from Egypt, while Nigeria and Kenya accounted for 10 per cent each.

Other African nations accounted for the remaining 30 per cent. “The last two years have seen an increase in the number of private equity firms making exits in the African markets,” Graham Stokoe, Africa Private Equity Leader at Ernst & Young, said in a statement.

“The biggest current challenges noted by private equity firms included an increasingly tough macro-economic environment, particularly currency fluctuations, valuations trending upwards and an intermediary landscape that is underdeveloped in a number of countries,” Ernst & Young said in the statement.

Most African currencies tumbled last year as commodities price rout on the international markets hurt their exports and the US Federal Reserve Bank hiked interest rates for the first time in nine-years.

Economists warned that emerging and frontier regions like Africa would face huge capital outflows as money that had left the United States during the financial crisis reversed the flow.

Private Equity firms shrug financial turmoil in many African countries in 2015 to raise a record $4.3 billion from the $2.6 billion accumulated in 2014.

Among those to close in 2015 was the Abraaj Group’s North Africa Fund II, which raised $375 million by August, $125 million above its target – its Africa Fund III had previously reached a final close at $990 million in March, having targeted $800 million. These were both topped by Helios Investors III, which reached a hard-cap of $1.1 billion, having targeted $900 million.

According to AVCA’s recent study, about 249 private equity exits took place in Africa between 2007 and 2014. While 2016 is not expected to be better than last year, five Africa-focused private equity funds have already closed this year, raising a total of $575 million, including the $295 million Investec Asset Management Africa Frontier Private Equity Fund 2, according to Preqin Ltd.

According to a Bloomberg report, private equity fundraising in Africa is expected to drop to about $2 billion this year because of economic headwinds, the potential downgrade of South African debt in June, and because some of the largest firms closed their funds last year

Editor’s Note: This was contributed by Tolulope Olaifa

Stepping into the lobby of this “luxury” hotel I’d stopped at, I immediately started congratulating myself on finding such a beautiful hotel at such a great price- little did I know that I’d come to regret my decision. I stayed in this blissful happiness till about 6pm when I was lounging with a drink in hand and the TV remote in the other, the power suddenly tripped off. Thinking it was a routine power changeover, I stayed in semi-darkness for about ten minutes, before heading to the reception to ask what was wrong. See chaos at the reception! Apparently the receptionist was tired of telling guests that the hotel only put on their generator at 10 o’clock in the night, and she lost her cool when a guest came at her hot and angry. Eventually, things calmed down after a few blows, and the hotel manager informed us that we would have to pay extra if we wanted them to run the generator overnight. This experience left me wishing I’d done more research before flying 400km away from home and assuming I could rely on good luck to get me a good hotel.

Generally, Nigerians tend to wait for things to reach the eleventh hour before handling them; unfortunately, this is also the case with arranging for accommodation when going on a trip. Most people think, “What’s the use of booking a hotel online when I can get there and get a room immediately?” This mentality usually leads to booking less-than-standard hotels which can invariably ruin the entire trip. Another strong Nigerian train of thought is that booking online is too stressful. The funniest reason I got for why people don’t book online was that the hotel booking site might be a scam and run with their money.

Now, all these excuses may have been true a few years back, but because everything in the world is becoming digital, it has become extremely easy to book hotels online. Making reservations on hotel booking sites gives you the opportunity to thoroughly review several hotels and their facilities in minutes and make sure the price is within your range. It also gives you the opportunity to choose a hotel that is close to where you want to be, instead of managing one hotel 50km from where you are actually going. Also, booking online entitles you to perks you won’t normally receive when you check into a hotel physically. For example, a hotel booking platform like hotelnownow.com goes beyond the normal ‘pay and stay’ approach- they actually work to get customers some of the deepest personalised discounts, as well as super deals on select hotels and locations. Come on, there’s no plausible excuse for you to take a trip and end up in a “yeye” hotel ever again – go digital and book online today.

Over the past few months, I have tried to form a long-term habit of reading about and writing solutions to programming puzzles and common coding interview questions. In the process, I have implemented quite a number of solutions to many programming puzzles and compiled them into some sort of constantly updated “diary”. This “diary” is maintained and updated as a git repository on Github.

As at the time of this blog post, the repository contains 60 Python solutions to about 55 programming puzzles and common coding interview questions. Find the repository here:https://github.com/davidadamojr/diary_of_programming_puzzles

Note:  David Adamo Jr. contributed this piece.