2 Ghanaian Companies Make Africa's Top 20 List

1. M-Net (South Africa), Pay television. Of the many successful South African companies that are rolling out across the African continent, the pay television service M-Net has got to be one of the three most visible. M-Net is Africa's largest pay television service, delivering crystal-clear 24-hour programming to dozens of countries across the continent.

2. Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) (South Africa), mobile phone operator. Across much of central and southern Africa, MTN is quickly becoming one of the most recognizable companies. It provides a service so crucial for Africa's economic and social development and yet which would be too expensive to set up through land-based lines, given the crumbled state of many African countries' infrastructure.

3. Grintek (South Africa) , communication systems Grintek Ltd is an electronics and communications contractor and supplies electronic systems to the telecommunications, mining, defense, avionics, air traffic control, security and power utilities markets in South Africa.

4. Debswana Diamond Company (Botswana), Diamond mining. The huge diamond mining company operates in Africa's most successful economy. Botswana has the world's highest per capita foreign reserves, which stand at $ 7 billion. The southwestern African nation also has the highest credit rating in Africa.

5. K-Rep (Kenya), micro-finance commercial bank. The managing director of K-Rep Bank, Kimathi Mutua, told the East African Standard newspaper on April 3 that K-Rep lent 450 million Kenyan shillings to entrepreneurs in the small and medium enterprises sector, in 2000.

6. Regimanuel Gray (Ghana), real estate developer. Regimanuel Gray Limited, received two international awards in 2001 in Paris and Brussele for its outstanding achievements in the construction industry in Ghana.

7. ISP KENYA (Kenya), Internet Service Provider. By Trupti Shah. ISP Kenya in 2001 introduced the Family- Friendly Services, ISP Family-net, a service which enables parents filter out such offensive web sites as pornography and drugs, and ISP Filter-net, which controls the mumber of web sites that employees can view while on the job.

8. South African Breweries (South Africa), beer brewing. The world's fourth largest brewery South African Breweries continued its dominance of the African market in 2001, and spread further afield, this time into China. SAB is best known for its brand called Castle.

9. Dimension Data (South Africa), information technology. To put the impact of Dimension Data into perspective, the Information technology consulting firm IDC announced on June 7 the world's top 10 leading IT service companies, ranked according to revenues in 2000.

10. Pick'n Pay (South Africa), supermarket chain. Pick 'n Pay was one of several South African companies which in 2001 was reaching, not just beyond borders, but beyond the continent. It had been in talks for several months on the takeover of a number of stores owned by the Franklins Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based group, Dairy Farm International.

11. Anglovaal Mining Limited (AVMIN) (South Africa) , platinum mining. Avmin announced in Johannesburg on March 1 that its earnings had gone up 92 precent for the six months ending December 31, 2000.

12. Energy Africa (South Africa), oil exploration. The oil exploration and production company Energy Africa Limited reported what it called an "exceptional set of results" for the first quarter of 2001 at the end of March.

13. Ashanti Goldfields Company (Ghana), gold mining. "To build an African gold mining and exploration company to international standards of excellence, managed predominantly by Africans."

14. Kenya Airways (Kenya), airline. Kenya Airways, already one of Africa's most successful airlines, continued to jet forward in 2001. It entered a strategic alliance with Air Botswana in April and has as its main partner the Royal Dutch airline KLM.

15. Eskom Enterprises (South Africa), telecommunications. Eskom Enterprises, through its telecommunications branch Esi-Tel, announced on May 29 that it plans to construct a fibre-optic cable all the way from South Africa to Europe, without the use of submarine cables.

16. Vodacom (South Africa), mobile phone operator. The South African telecommunications holding company VenFin on June 21 recorded a 7.4 percent rise in its annual headline earnings per share.

17. Ostrich Automotive Components (South Africa) , car upholstery. This South African company came up in 2001 with a novel idea, to take advantage of the foot-and-mouth animal disease crisis in Britain during the first half of 2001. British cattle, which provided much of the leather for car seats in Europe, was being slaughtered by the hundreds.

18. EFG-Hermes (Egypt), financial group. EFG-Hermes announced on June 14 that it was in merger talks with another Egyptian financial services firm, Commercial International Investment Company (CIIC).

19. Trans Hex Group (South Africa), diamond mining. Only a few years ago, Trans Hex was an obscure mining company as part of the Rembrandt conglomerate, overshadowed by the world-reknown De Beers.

20. New Clicks (South Africa) , cosmetics and health care retailer. It was announced in Johannesburg on June 25 that the South African retail company New Clicks Holdings Ltd is to open up to 30 stores over the next three years, following a $1.24 million franchise agreement with the British cosmetics company The Body Shop. The Body Shop was founded by Anita Roddick in 1976.