PAN-African multilateral lender Afreximbank president George Elombi says Africa’s infrastructure deficit stems less from a lack of political will and more from weak project preparation and poor alignment with long-term capital.
Speaking at the launch of the Africa Infrastructure Financing Facility (AIFF) during the Third Presidential High-Level Dialogue of the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions in Ethiopia recently, Elombi said many priority projects fail to reach financial close despite securing political backing.
“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,” Elombi said.
“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.”
The AIFF was unveiled on the margins of the 39th African Union Summit under the theme “Strengthening Africa’s Financial Architecture to Finance Agenda 2063”.
Established under a cooperation framework between AUDA-NEPAD and AAMFI, the facility is designed to coordinate project preparation and facilitate indicative, non-binding financing engagement for priority cross-border infrastructure projects.
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Elombi said African multilateral financial institutions are better placed to close the preparation gap because they understand the continent’s risk profile and market dynamics.
“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 said.
Other African leaders used the platform to highlight broader structural financing constraints, including high cost-of-capital premiums, fragmented capital markets and continued reliance on external financial systems.
Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, the African Union Champion on AU Financial Institutions, said Africa holds more than US$2,5 trillion in domestic capital pools. The challenge, he argued, lies in deployment rather than availability.
“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,” Mahama said.
African Union commissioner for economic development, trade, tourism, industry and minerals, Francisca Tatchouop Belobe, said the continent faces an estimated US$221 billion annual infrastructure financing gap between 2023 and 2030.
Outgoing AAMFI chair and Africa Finance Corporation president Samaila Zubairu said the alliance, whose members have a combined balance sheet exceeding US$70 billion, would play a central role in coordinated capital mobilisation.
Incoming AAMFI chair Corneille Karekezi, who leads Africa Reinsurance Corporation, said Africa’s development finance must be anchored in collaboration and innovation through risk-sharing and stronger institutions.
The dialogue also saw Cameroon deposit its instrument of ratification for the African Monetary Fund, signalling progress towards operationalising key African Union financial institutions.
However, the central message from the meeting focused on execution risk, with Elombi positioning the AIFF as a practical mechanism to convert political commitments into bankable, finance-ready infrastructure projects.