Make no mistake; there is a lot of money to be made in developed Asia. However the really smart money has long since moved on from picking over Chinese steel stocks or Indian IT companies.

When your average investor in Australia can get exposure through a fund to these sectors, then a market has ceased to be undiscovered and the ability to identify mispriced investment opportunities has rapidly decreased.

You can’t get a booking at the Hyatt in Shanghai nowadays because of all the fund managers, analysts, speculators and bankers staying there ahead of a round of company meetings.

Despite the shudders and misapprehension from many, Africa is rapidly hitting the radar screens of the world’s smartest investors. It’s also telling that while western investors are continually arriving in China, Chinese investors are getting on planes to Africa.

Some might say that it’s all too hard and too much risk, but the same was said about emerging Asian markets in the 1980s and eastern European markets in the 1990s.

While entrepreneurial Australian mining executives have long been prepared to put their money where their mouth is from Zambia to the Congo, increasingly so are the world’s smartest investors.

Take a look at the share registry of some of the Australian-Africa plays and you will see an increasing number of leading global hedge funds and traditional fund managers on the registry. For instance, Australian energy company Range Resources, operating in Puntland in Northern Somalia, has one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, Tudor, on its share registry.

Stephen Jennings, the former Kiwi investment banker turned billionaire Russian Investment Banker, recently stated the opportunity in Africa represented a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”

While many might view Africa as purely a resource play, spend any time travelling the continent and you will be shocked by the number of emerging financial institutions or the proliferation of cell phones.

Africa is certainly not a place for the nervous to invest but then again there is a reason for the correlation between risk and rewards in financial markets.

Disclaimer: Matt Marks owns stocks which have African operations.