The Wellcome Trust, one of the UK’s biggest charity investors,  plans to invest as much as much as £927m in Africa over the next five years, says the Trust’s chief investment officer Danny Truell, speaking at the third annual PEI Africa Forum.

The £16bn Trust currently has £309m of capital already invested in the continent, and plans to increase this figure to £371m by the end of this year, according to reports from Investment & Pensions Europe. 

The Wellcome Trust has so far entered three investment partnerships in Africa, two of which make private equity investments, said Truell.

Last year, the Wellcome Trust recorded an 11.1 per cent return on its investments in the year to September 2010.

Public equities, the largest element of the portfolio, returned 31 per cent, which is 12 per cent ahead of global equities markets over the period.