If TRAMX doesn't provide enough African coverage for your wild side, the S&P people may be able to fulfill your jungle urges with the introduction of 3 Africa based indexes.

http://indexuniverse.com/sections/breaking-news/10/4057-sap-rolls-out-indexes-for-africa-india.html

"The S&P Pan Africa Index is designed to represent 80% of the market capitalization of each of 12 African markets-Botswana (0.38%), Cote D'Ivoire (1.06%), Egypt (10.17%), Ghana (0.16%), Kenya (0.86%), Mauritius (1.07%), Morocco (8.57%), Namibia (0.04%), Nigeria (16.23%), South Africa (60.56%), Tunisia (0.54%) and Zimbabwe (0.36%). It has a total of 333 companies, 138 of them South African, and represents about $362 billion in adjusted market capitalization."

"Meanwhile, the S&P Africa Frontier Index excludes Egypt, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia. Basically these are the countries that are classified as emerging markets rather than frontier markets: They represent nearly 80% of the pan-Africa index and almost two-thirds of its total number of stocks. As a result, the S&P Africa Frontier Index is largely dominated by Nigeria, which has a weighting of more than 80%...."

"The S&P Africa 40 Index includes the largest and most liquid stocks in the region........Currently the index includes stocks from eight African countries: Congo (2.77%), Egypt (20.00%), Ghana (1.93%), Mali (5.78%), Morocco (20.18%), Nigeria (12.10%), South Africa (28.99%) and Zambia (8.25%)......"

The first one is mainly S.Africa, the second one looks to be the most Frontierish, despite the large amount of Nigeria, and the last one may be the most diversified, even with only 8 countries represented.

Any takers when the ETF's come out?

Coy

No way! I want an intelligent human brain like TRAMX manager Chris Alderson to do the stock picking, not a "Pan Africa Index" fund run by a computer. I am going to leave it up to Alderson to identify any opportunities in the African countries mentioned above.

I'll keep my eye on them. Thanks for the heads up. I've been pretty darn lucky with ILF over the past 3-4 years. So I won't rule them out completely.

Closer,

You took the words right out of my mouth!

WOW!  Must mean I am finally learning something, or your dumbing down.

I trust it is the former :o)

Brian

According to the latest Statement of Additional Information, dated today, May 1, 2008, Christopher Alderson has over $1 Million of his own money in TRAMX.  Plus he has between $100,001 to $500,000 in Emerging Markets Stock Fund.

Coy