It is commonly said and believed that there are countries in which investors can invest and those in which they must not. In fact, many investors today are paranoid about investing in some countries. And, nothing in this whole wide world will make them invest in some countries outside their own. Unfortunately, the investment environments are getting more tricky, dangerous and competitive that investors must cast their investment nets wider ashore if they are to remain liquid and not go hungry ultimately. This is more so against the background of the global financial crisis that has proved that no country is immune to financial and investment collapse irrespective of level of development.

The opinion in conservative investment environments before is that some nations are nearly immune to crash due to their matured investment culture, transparency, honesty of stakeholders and strict regulatory regimes that guarantee returns on investment. Against these backdrops, investing in Africa, Asia and Latin America for instance will not be readily embraced given the general investment climates and level of policy frameworks in those environments. Unfortunately, data and experiences now suggest that these are emerging markets and they hold huge prospects for future of investments and this is regardless of which investments are in question. Cases of Brazil, India and China have somewhat proved this point.

The issue to be concerned with now is that; Investment climate  if these so called ‘investment risky’ business jurisdictions hold huge prospects for daring and real investors, how are they to invest profitably in these investments? Below are some things investors must ensure when investing in any country/environment regardless of the levels of development of those country/state/city and even village.

1. The investor must study the place of investment critically. The study is not just about professional feasibility studies that will be full of jargon that are too familiar to failure. The study should be both professional and rudimentary and investors and/or their representatives must go to the streets to ask/study ordinary people about dynamics of investing in their countries. Critical stakeholders in government, industry and politics must be engaged even informally to get their views and opinions candidly on the investment climate predominant in such domains.

2. Investors must free themselves of stereotypes and biases about the place of investment. A lot of prejudices and stereotypes have been spread in the investment sectors about some places and these will not make some investors invest in such places. The good news however is that most of these prejudices and stereotypes are not true in most instances.