Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais (born 28 October 1967 in Fribourg)[1] is a Swiss-Angolan entrepreneur.[2] He founded Quantum Global Group, an international investment group with a particular focus on Africa[2] and Banco Kwanza Invest, Angola's first investment bank.
Bastos was cited as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine in 2013[3] and 2017.[4]
Early life and education
Bastos was born on 28 October 1967 in Fribourg, Switzerland.[1] He is of bi-national heritage. His father is from Angola[5] and his mother is Swiss, coming from an entrepreneurial family.[6] His maternal grand-father was an industrialist in the watch industry[7] and invented the light inside the watch.[8] According to Bastos, his late Angolan grandmother inspired him to establish the African Innovation Foundation in 2009.[6]
In 1989, Bastos joined Deloitte as a consultant and later Abegglen Management Partners. In 1995, he founded a venture capital company focused on Swiss SMEs.[11]
In 2004, Bastos founded Quantum Capital S.A. in Luanda, Angola, the first company of the Quantum Global Group.[12][13] In 2007, Quantum Global Investment Management was founded in Switzerland.[12] As an asset management company for global liquid investments,[14][15] Quantum Global also expanded into the real estate business after establishing Quantum Global Real Estate in June 2009.[16] From 2012, Quantum Global together with Plaza, a joint venture with JLL subsidiary LaSalle, purchased office properties on Savile Row,[17]Fifth Avenue[18] and in Munich.[19] The Tour Blanche in Paris followed in 2014.[20] Other fields of activity of Quantum Global included private equity, portfolio management,[21] and a laboratory for economic research.[22]
In 2008, Bastos de Morais founded Banco Kwanza Invest,[23] Angola's first investment bank.[24]
In 2011, Bastos was convicted along with his partner by a criminal court in Switzerland for illegally paid out money in an investment company under their control.[25] A fine Bastos was set to pay was later suspended and the Swiss prosecutors dropped the charges, with Bastos holding no criminal record.[26]
In September 2015, Quantum Global became a member of the Forest Stewardship Council.[27] In 2016, a fund managed by the group acquired the InterContinental Hotel in Lusaka.[28] In 2020, Quantum Global Investment Management merged with Quantum Global Corporate Services.[29]
Fábrica de Sabão
Fábrica de Sabão
In 2015, he launched the hybrid innovation hub, Fábrica de Sabão[30] (The Soap Factory) to support innovation projects in Angola. Fábrica de Sabão, a former soap factory, was converted into a hybrid incubator, co-working space, maker-space, and accelerator hub.[31] The hub was a collaboration with the government, which leases its premises. Fábrica de Sabão was built as an inclusive model to enable marginalized communities to participate in sustainable enterprise such as urban manufacturing.[32]
In 2009, he founded the African Innovation Foundation (AIF),[40] which aimed to support sustainable projects in Africa. The Foundation's "Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA)" was launched in 2011 in cooperation with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).[41] The IPA held an annual competition honoring African entrepreneurs and innovators[42] through investment[43] in their ecosystems[44] and business development.[45] In 2016, the Innovation Prize for Africa celebrated its 5th anniversary,[46] and the AIF signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for cooperation to support African innovators.[47] In February 2017, the AIF signed a MoU with the Botswana Innovation Hub to support innovations in Botswana.[48] In addition to the IPA, the AIF founded the ZuaHub, a platform connecting innovators with resources.[49] By 2017, the IPA had a database of over 6,000 innovators from 51 African countries.[50]
In 2012, the IPA was endorsed by a joint resolution of the African Union (AU) conference of ministers of finance, development and planning, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) conference of ministers of finance, planning and economic development. The AU/UN-ECA resolution invited "African governments and the private sector to contribute to financing the African Science, Technology and Innovation Endowment Fund and the Innovation Prize for Africa"[51] to ensure the sustainability of the IPA.[52]
African Law Library
The AIF also initiated the African Law Library (ALL). The project was launched on 28 November 2013 at the African Union's headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. With ALL Bastos implemented his idea of an online portal offering access to a wide range of legal documents as well as law and governance texts from African countries.[53] The Huffington Post reported that 'in June 2014 alone, more than 10,000 research sessions were initiated on the African Law Library platform'. In March 2015 over 4,500 regional and national court cases, 3,600 legislative acts and 8,000 secondary sources from eight African countries were published online.[54]
In November 2017, BBC News reported him in relation to the Paradise Papers,[59][60][61][62] particularly his use of Angola's sovereign wealth fund Fundo Soberano de Angola (FSDEA) for his own investment projects. According to a Bastos interview by The Guardian, FSDEA had not paid brokerage or finder’s fees for those investments where he himself also held a stake.[63] After the Paradise Papers were leaked,[64] licenses of seven funds of Bastos' Quantum Global were suspended in Mauritius after a visit of Angolan officials.[65]
At the end of July 2018, the freezing of British bank accounts was lifted by London's High Court; the court ruled that the freezing was based on false information.[66][67][68]
In the autumn of 2018, after the High Court in London had legally confirmed the contracts between Quantum Global and FSDEA, Bastos was taken into pre-trial detention in Angola[69][70][71] In March 2019,[72] Angola paid a settlement to Bastos[73][74] and dropped all charges against Bastos and Quantum Global.[75][76][77] When the settlement was reached, Bastos was released from pre-trial detention in March 2019.[71]
Writing
He is the co-editor of the book Innovation Ethics. African and Global Perspectives,[78] co-published by Globethics.net and the AIF. The book looks at innovation ethics and the “ethical innovator,”[79][clarification needed] from multidisciplinary and international perspectives with a focus on Africa.
The Convergence of Nations: Why Africa’s Time Is Now, OMFIF Press,[80] in collaboration with a team of 31 authors from 15 nations on how Africa can benefit from changes in the world political and economic environment.
SEED is a collaboration with the African Innovation Foundation (AIF), a Swiss-registered foundation.[81]SEED was published to reinforce the value and benefit of seeding innovation in all fields of development for a rich and prosperous Africa.[82]
↑ Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, Christoph Stückelberger (2014). Innovation Ethics. Geneva: Global Ethics.net. pp.70, Innovation Ethics for Value-based Innovation, Christoph Stückelberger. ISBN978-2-88931-003-6.
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