Business
Africa Finance Corporation seeks to invest $3 billion across sub-Saharan Africa
(Reuters) –Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a Lagos-based development financier, is considering potential investments worth US$3 billion across sub-Saharan Africa over the next year, its chief executive said on Monday.
Created in 2007 to help increase much-needed investments in the key infrastructure, transport and heavy industries sectors in Africa, the AFC, 46 percent-owned by seven west African states including Nigeria and Ghana, has already invested US$500 million in projects worth a total US$4 billion from Cape Verde to Zambia.
“In our sectors we see a lot of opportunities. We are currently reviewing investments totalling US$3 billion across the continent. That is what our pipeline is,” Andrew Alli (President and Chief Executive Officer of the AFC) told Reuters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
“These are projects from Senegal down to Mozambique. Virtually every country in sub-Sahara Africa has a power deficit so there is obviously quite a lot of opportunity in power.”
Alli said AFC – part of a growing phenomenon of Africans investing in their own continent – also looks for a commercial return on its investments, was looking to conclude the potential deals soon.
“It is almost certain that we won’t invest in all of them but we would expect to review them and close them over the course of the next year or so,” he said.
Alli, whose organization invested US$50 million in Kenyan cement firm Athi River Mining this year, praised the government of Kenya for policies aimed at encouraging private investments in the energy sector.
