The Lonrho name still inspires visions of Tiny Rowlands’s sprawling African empire, “the unacceptable face of capitalism” and the takeover battle for Harrods.

The old Lonrho was broken up after Rowlands’s departure, but from its ashes another African conglomerate has emerged, one that still bears the famous name.

The new Lonrho, which is quoted on the Alternative Investment Market, is a much smaller beast than its forebear – at last week’s closing price of 31½p, it has a market value of £119m.

It has a similar business, however, with investments in a range of African countries.

It has started a regional airline in Kenya, for example, and will replicate the business in Angola later in the year. Eventually the plan is to link the hubs to create a pan-African airline run to Western standards.

Other investments include water-bottling plants, a shipping line, port infrastructure and hotels.

On Monday, the company is expected to announce a joint venture to develop a new logistics park and port facility at Luanda, the Angolan capital, where an oil boom has led to severe harbour congestion.

While investors love the growth prospects in sub-Saharan Africa, they hate the political risk – something that investors in African mining companies have had cause to rue in recent years as they have watched concession agreements disappear as regimes changed.

Lonrho’s multi-country, conglomerate approach does, however, give some insurance against this threat. The shares are a speculative buy. Housebuilders IN recent weeks we have drawn attention to the plight of housebuilders, but it’s a fast-moving, or rather, fast-deteriorating scene.

On Friday the investment bank UBS put out its latest forecast for the UK housing market, saying it expects prices to fall 7% this year; the bank forecasts prices will eventually drop 12% from their peak.

At the same time, the bank’s team that covers housebuilders slashed its expectations for the quoted companies in the sector, and painted a grim picture where “dividend payouts would be reviewed, gearing would rise, and balance sheets would be scrutinised for possible equity issues”.

It now has only one “buy” in the sector, which is Berkeley. It is worth noting that UBS is particularly gloomy – it thinks its own estimates for earnings in the sector are about 40% below the market consensus.

In a situation like this, when a sector is taking a battering from what should be a short-term crisis – in this case the credit crunch – the trick is to spot the right time to buy.

Seasoned investors will say the point is not to try and catch the absolute bottom of the market – a mug’s game – but to get in once the worst of the trouble is out of the way, and then sit tight.

With housebuilders, the time hasn’t quite come yet. We still haven’t seen how bad the mortgage market could become, and there may be company-specific problems where the highly indebted groups get into trouble with the covenants on their loans and bond issues.

But the time will come. UBS believes a rerating of the sector could eventually produce share prices 60% higher than now.

Those with an eye to the long term could start buying now, but shorter-termers should still stay on the sidelines.

dominic.oconnell@sunday-times.co.uk

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