African lenders bank on new infrastructure facility to bypass external funding
Business
By
Brian Ngugi
| Feb 26, 2026
African heads of state have launched a coordinated financing platform aimed at preparing and funding cross-border infrastructure projects using the continent's own capital pools, seeking to reduce reliance on external financial systems that leaders say misprice African risk.
The Africa Infrastructure Financing Facility (AIFF) was formally launched on February 14 during a presidential dialogue of the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions (AAMFI) held on the margins of the 39th African Union Summit.
The facility brings together African-owned multilateral lenders with combined balance sheets exceeding $70 billion to address what leaders described as persistent constraints in delivering infrastructure aligned with the AU's Agenda 2063 development goals.
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"Africa has domestic capital pools exceeding $2.5 trillion," Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, the AU champion on financial institutions, said at the launch.
He added, "The challenge is not the availability of capital, but how intentionally we deploy it into infrastructure, industrialisation, and job creation to realise Agenda 2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Area."
The initiative responds to financing constraints stemming from fragmented capital markets, elevated cost-of-capital premiums and limited long-term funding, according to a communique issued after the dialogue.
Agenda 2063 faces an estimated annual infrastructure financing gap of approximately $221 billion between 2023 and 2030, said Francisca Tatchouop Belobe, the AU's commissioner for economic development.
The facility is designed to address what lenders described as a persistent gap between political approval and financial execution.
"The Africa Infrastructure Financing Facility has been designed to address the most persistent constraint to infrastructure delivery in Africa: the gap between political approval and financial execution," said George Elombi, president of Afreximbank.
"Too many projects stall not because they lack relevance, but because they are insufficiently prepared, inadequately structured, or misaligned with the requirements of long-term capital,” he said.
Elombi said African multilateral institutions understand African risk, markets and development realities.
"By pooling expertise, balance sheets and risk frameworks, the Facility moves Africa from fragmented interventions to a coherent system capable of mobilising capital at scale," he added.
The facility was established under a cooperation framework agreement between the AU Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) and AAMFI. It will provide a structured mechanism to accelerate project preparation and facilitate financing for priority infrastructure.
Samaila Zubairu, president of Africa Finance Corporation and outgoing AAMFI chairman, said collective action was central to mobilising resources for transformative infrastructure and regional integration.
In a related development, Cameroon deposited its instrument of ratification for the protocol and statutes of the African Monetary Fund, a move aimed at promoting macroeconomic stability and balance-of-payments support among member states.
The Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions, also known as the Africa Club, is a coalition of African-owned multilateral institutions launched in February 2024 in collaboration with the African Union Commission. It brings together 12 institutions.