Can we really trust the pundits?

However, as we all know the pollsters can get it wrong – totally wrong. So let’s hope that’s the situation across Africa.

It may be hard to counter the statistics of the falling rand and low growth rate in South Africa, for example, but the rating agencies have given the country a reprieve this month, which will help businesses to continue to operate normally.

Also, talk to the rating agency analysts and they will say that, despite everything, companies are making money. So how can they downgrade entities when they continue to be profitable in otherwise gloomy circumstances?

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In Nigeria, too, the doommongers are out in force. But President Buhari seems on the verge of agreeing some sort of peace with activists in the oil-rich south, which would pave the way for more business in the region.

I caught up with a Nigerian delegation of insurers as they did a whistlestop tour of London earlier this month. Two messages were prevalent – they wanted the support of the international markets but they also wanted to learn and to be in a position to develop their local industry.

That seems to be the story across the continent. People understand that they have much to learn but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to develop their own markets. The same is true of risk management.

The risk managers we meet across the region say much the same thing – their profession might only just be developing in their own markets but that is not to say they don’t want to make it their own.

Risk management is about the collection of information, the assimilation of that data and the ability to communicate the findings to others across the organisation from top to bottom.

To some extent, risk managers are forecasters. But the difference is that risk managers are looking at all options. They are not naysayers or soothsayers, but they are delivering balanced views for others to draw their own conclusions from.

As with everything, it is always worth listening to others but only you can make the final decisions about what happens next.

To do that, education remains key. We are hearing more and more from global insurers that they don’t just want to come into Sub Saharan African markets and take profits back home – they want to share information and raise standards.

Hard and fast facts, as always, are critical to sit alongside those many predictions and we hope we can add to those with our one-day events. We are full steam ahead with our plans for the events across the continent, which look set to be fact-filled days with some key players in attendance.

We launch this year’s season with a trip to Windhoek on 8 September, followed by Nairobi on 30 September and Lagos on 20 October. I hope I will get to meet plenty of you across those three days – and at all the other regional events in between.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this read and please do get in touch if you have views you would like to share.