For Really Uncorrelated Returns, Try Investing in a Ghana Power Station

Investing in African power plants can boost returns, provide a hedge against global market shocks, and help lift people out of poverty, says Jerome Booth. The chairman of London-based New Sparta Asset Management Ltd. takes it a step further: For investors, not having such assets in a portfolio is “irresponsible,” he says.

Booth has strong opinions about emerging markets. An economist, he was part of the management group that in 1999 established Ashmore Group Plc, an emerging-markets-focused investment manager in London that now oversees $92 billion. After retiring from Ashmore in 2013, Booth started New Sparta, wrote Emerging Markets in an Upside Down World: Challenging Perceptions in Asset Allocation and Investment (Wiley, 2014), and was appointed chairman of Anglia Ruskin University’s board of governors.