Veteran emerging market investor Mark Mobius said on Tuesday he is holding onto his existing Egyptian stock position and is looking to add more even as the latest political crisis unfolds.

"It's a good play to hold what we have and buy more as the opportunities present themselves," Mobius told Reuters in a telephone interview, following a recent visit to Cairo which included going to Tahrir Square during protests there.

"Tahrir Square is not Egypt -- life goes on outside Cairo," he said, adding that the positive side of the latest wave of protests was that they were "relatively peaceful".

Mobius, executive chairman of Franklin Templeton's emerging markets group, said he was optimistic on the Middle East and North Africa region since the Arab Spring uprisings last year and was considering buying stocks in Tunisia and Libya.

Rwanda was another possible investment destination in Africa, while a change to a more market-friendly government in Venezuela would encourage him to invest there once more, Mobius said.

Emerging stocks would once more outperform the developed world next year, after underperformance in 2011 and the first part of 2012, with Brazil, Russia and Indonesia among current favoured plays, Mobius added. – Reuters