In 1998, Reda Rami created and launched what was to be his first career success, The International Investment And Finance Forum (TIIFF) in Casablanca, Morocco. TIIFF was an initiative that brought together financial experts and industry specialists to hold conversations around the major issues in global economics and finance, stock market crashes, investment banking opportunities, and suggest strategies for a financial reformation. This entity was later followed by the creation of Winvestnet in 2008.
Then fast-forward two decades and a year later in 2019 at a Washington DC hotel lobby TheAfricanDream.net met with a Mr. Rami who now has more experience and expertise up his sleeve and in his portfolio telling us more about his first baby TIIFF.
After speaking for a while about what inspired him to undertake such an innovative initiative, Mr. Rami that year said in an interview with TheAfricanDream.net that “I noticed a communication gap among financial players and I just wanted to open conversations around the global economic climate and discuss ways to improve it.” He added that the TIIFF provides an opportunity to hold impactful discussions and talks around stock market crashes and subsequently provide solutions to reform the financial market.
Looking back on TIIFF now, loads have happened to reshape the global finance and investment landscape which at the time experienced pervasive globalization. Some of these happenings included national economies integrating into the international economies with increased multinational trade, foreign direct investments, capital flows into the expansion of technology, the launch of the Euro. Also included are the regional integration of South America, emerging markets such as China, India, and Southeast Asia starting to play a major role in the global economy. Then there was the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and COVID19 among others.
Connected by AfCFTA
It was the AfCFTA that first connected TheAfricanDream.net to Reda when he met with Oral Ofori, founder of TheAfricanDream.net to talk about providing press coverage for the first U.S. Africa Investment Meeting (AIM) Roadshow in Washington, DC, the capital of the United States (U.S.). As a visionary leader, Mr. Reda Rami has had the chance to shape the global market expansion strategies of many companies across the world. And he was in DC in October 2019 to do just that again but this time with Africa in focus.
His vision has always been to assist companies to manage their internal resources effectively.
Throwing more light on his vast experience in international development and effective management, Reda said to Mr. Ofori that “I have had the opportunity to assist many companies in their international development, and it was such an amazing time for me to witness a global movement like AfCFTA in its infantile stages and the potential it possesses to make Africa a major global player in world trade and economy.“
And what is AfCFTA, well it is a free trade area founded in 2018 among members of the African Union (AU) nations. The free-trade area is the largest in the world in terms of the number of participating countries since the formation of the World Trade Organization. Ghana’s capital city of Accra serves as the Secretariat of AfCFTA whose building was commissioned and handed over to the AU by the President of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo on August 17, 2020, in Accra.
Both Mr. Rami and Ofori were excited about Africa’s trade prospects under the promising potential with AfCFTA — then boom — a year later COVID19 happened. Just when a lot of effort and innovative measures had been made and taken to introduce some basic ethics and transparency into the global financial system to avoid such scandals as Madoff and ENRON in the U.S., the latter, of course, being recognized as the seventh-largest company in the U.S. at a point in time in history, which also provided an equally big scandal. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time.
ENRON for its part was cited as the biggest audit failure, while Madoff Securities is currently characterized as one of the largest Ponzi schemes in the history of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
And now enters Winvestnet and the potential it holds for AfCFTA
Internationalization of the global economy provided more opportunities for fraudsters as our current financial systems are still flawed and have loopholes that sophisticated criminals can still take advantage of. For this reason, Reda exclaimed as he said to TheAfricanDream.net “It’s hard to imagine that after all the financial expertise acquired during this decade of financial literacy and the experiences of people, we can’t in the 21st Century still fully avoid scandals in the financial industry even though we’ve figured out Mars exploration. Getting away with getting easy money does make humans super-innovative,” he said with a smile.
2008 saw one of the greatest financial crises in modern history. The global economy was plunged into recession due to greed and the exploitation of the subprime market. Prices continued to tumble. Major businesses declared bankruptcy. As Reda recounted “It was just a mess. Nobody understood what was happening. People lost trust and confidence in the whole financial system, it’s so unfortunate how greed pushes only a few to the extremes of hurting humanity.“
Out of the 2008 recession emerged the idea behind Winvestnet. Remember we mentioned Winvestnet in the first paragraph? Now let’s devote a few paragraphs to it by sharing how and why Reda created it.
Some systems or processes needed to be created to stimulate and facilitate growth in the global economy while also protecting it against scams and frauds. Ethics and transparency needed to be injected into the global economy. According to Reda, Winvestnet came into being when he tasked himself with the purpose to create a global and borderless investment environment that adheres to the highest ethical standards in all aspects of financial practices.
While most financial instruments were fast crashing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the cryptocurrency market was still booming even a year into the pandemic. For instance, Bitcoin – the world’s first cryptocurrency – could be purchased for about US$7,300 even in its infantile stages. Today though, the very same token costs more than US$37.5K – a staggering 640 percent raise, and yes it has even risen above this number, surpassing $50,000 for the first time in February 2021.
Other leading cryptocurrencies (e.g. Ether), showed similar (or even greater) increases. However, this upward trend is not necessarily obvious from a theoretical standpoint, as several forces might drive demand up or down in response to a crisis. One concern for Reda’s Winvestnet about this is the fact that the cryptocurrency world’s tight anonymity means hackers and criminals in the cyberworld can move money without revealing their identities and that makes it hard to “follow the money“, so the question is, “what if the money is dirty?“
“…young Africans must feel confident about their continent’s economic and financial prospects”
“We want to develop critical ways for traders and investors in the market of cryptocurrency to take advantage of in our quest to make that world harder for criminals to abuse. and here at Winvestnet, we keep conversations about the world economy and how to make it better to make informed market decisions to maximize profits at the core of our agenda,” Reda said.
Winvestnet seeks to remain a completely neutral platform as they firmly believe this is extremely important to put their brand in a position where they are ahead of their competitors and can build relationships that are mutually beneficial and growth-oriented, based on synergy and not competition, “as we say in Africa — Ubuntu” retorted Mr. Rami, who felt equitable distribution of wealth was necessary to move the continent of Africa forward.
“So how does Winvestnet see its role as far as AfCFTA is concerned?” Mr. Ofori asked the Winvestnet CEO, and simply put, Reda responded: “I would like to talk to the world about our investment strategy oriented towards high-impact projects in Africa, especially in the energy transition and new green hydrogen energy projects to support the AfCFTA and to empower the youths of Africa with the hope of a better future that they can see and own — young Africans must feel confident about their continent’s economic potential and positive financial prospects…“
Watch this video below to learn more about Winvestnet and visit www.winvestnet.com to find out why they stand out as an investment and trade platform dedicated to Africa.
Source: TheAfricanDream.net
Oral Ofori is Founder and Publisher at www.TheAfricanDream.net, a digital storyteller and producer, and also an information and research consultant.
