"Obviously in North Africa, it's off the charts — some of the providers literally won't provide it at any price," said James Bond, chief operating officer of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, the political risk arm of the World Bank.
"But in Africa specifically, I actually haven't seen an increase in the risk premia over the last three or four months," he told Reuters at a conference in Johannesburg.
The view of a stable sub-Saharan risk profile is supported by the performance of the region's dollar-denominated bonds, which have not reacted to events in Egypt and Tunisia.
The yield on Ghana's $750 million 10-year Eurobond, due in 2017, dropped from 6.3 percent to 6.9 percent at the end of January, although analysts said that was more in reaction to a default by Ivory Coast.
As protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak intensified throughout February, the yield retreated again toward 6.6 percent.
The frontier economies of the poorest continent are attracting increasing quantities of foreign investment, particularly in the mining sector, given the region's vast untapped mineral resources.
As such, mining companies in particular are having to chance their arm in countries that offer significant risk of conflict or sudden policy U-turns. However, those chances have little to do with events on the ground in Egypt or Tunisia, Bond said.
"It's absolutely clear to us that mining companies are willing to go in even to the likes of Zimbabwe, although we frankly believe that this is not a good investment destination because of the lack of clarity over the whole investment framework," Bond said.
Zimbabwe's economy has stabilized since its unity government ditched the worthless Zimbabwe dollar two years ago in favor of US dollars or South Africa's rand, and the government is predicting growth of between 8 and 15 percent this year.
However, the country remains desperately short of capital and lenders from the IMF and the World Bank to donor states and private investors are unwilling to write any checks while President Robert Mugabe remains in power.
