Fidelity EMEA for cautious souls

The fund aims to generate long-term capital growth by investing in the less developed countries of central, eastern and southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. While its investment remit sees it investing in countries that index provider MSCI considers emerging (rather than frontier) markets, the fund is unconstrained by benchmark, and any industry, country or company size bias is purely the result of the manager's stock-picking, which is value-based.

The fund, which sits within the Investment Management Association's specialist sector, has posted strong returns over the long term. However, this year it has not been immune to the volatility that has plagued the regions in which it invests, falling almost 7 per cent in the year to date.

The fund is well diversified, with 80 holdings according to Morningstar figures. The majority of its Africa exposure is to South Africa (42 per cent) with companies such as media giant Naspers, Anglogold Ashanti, Harmony Gold Mining and Sasol all featuring in the top 10 holdings.

The fund has been managed by Nick Price since its launch in 2008. Mr Price is very optimistic about the long-term prospects for Africa and he is particularly interested in the impact of mobile telephony on the continent. "Consider that 10 years ago Nigeria, home to 150m people, had 450,000 fixed telephony lines. Today it has nearly 70m mobile phone users. That has had a profound impact on productivity, which in turn is reflected in strong GDP performance.

"It is this virtuous circle that underpins the consumer opportunity in Africa, with cumulative revenues from sales of goods and services expected to outpace revenues from the resources sector by almost three to one over the next decade."

Source: Investors Chronicle Funds Data. *Morningstar

Performance figures as at 9 June 2011

Top 10 holdings (as at 30 April 2011)

Geographic Breakdown