SOURCE: BUSINESSWEEK

The World Bank expects to secure $500 million in a first round of money raising for a private equity fund to co-invest in companies in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, President Robert Zoellick said.

“All of you, as African leaders, know the perils of this economic crisis,” Zoellick said at the African Union Summit in Ethiopia today, according to a copy of his speech. “But you also know about Africa’s opportunities and its potential to be another source of growth for the world economy.”

The International Finance Corp., the World Bank unit that lends to companies, will manage the fund, as well as a $200 million pool to invest “in systemically important banks” in Africa, Zoellick said. Investors are pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, according to the World Bank.

The Washington-based institution, which has committed $88 billion to poor and middle-income countries since the middle of 2008, …

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SOURCE:  BLOOMBERG

Costa Rica’s foreign direct investment will return to 2008 levels after falling about 30 percent this year, boosted by tourism and investments in ports and telecommunications projects, said Marco Vinicio Ruiz, the country’s minister of foreign trade.

“I visit companies all the time,” Ruiz said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “They say they are ready to go to Costa Rica, they’re just waiting for the board to approve that.”

Ruiz, 55, is in New York for an event to attract money to the telephone industry, which opened to private investments this year. He will travel to Singapore on Nov. 7 to present bid opportunities for a concession of a port in the Caribbean Sea, which will be the country’s biggest.

Foreign direct investment will be about $2 billion next year, in line with 2008, after plunging this year as the …

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SOURCE: VENTURE BEAT

Santiago, Chile-based Austral Capital is one of a growing number of Latin American VC firms making names for themselves. Thanks to aggressive support from the Chilean government, the less than two-year old company has funded several Chilean start-ups, including Atakama Labs, which I wrote about earlier today. And it’s also moved quickly to set up an office in Silicon Valley and hired Hiroshi Wald to run the show. Wald said Austral’s Silicon Valley mission is two-fold: help Chilean entrepreneurs succeed in the U.S. market and also find worthwhile U.S. companies in which to invest.

Wald is also the Program Chair of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab. His prior positions include Managing Director at Competitive Insights and the Zeno Group. He also founded Zingdata, which Knowledge Networks acquired. He said in an interview that he is bullish on Chile and that there are “so few venture firms focused …

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