Africa Investment Forum (AIF)

Africa's Investment Market Place

During November 7-9, 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Africa Investment Forum (AIF) is where project sponsors, borrowers, lenders, and public and private sector investors will come together to accelerate Africa's investment opportunities. With the Africa Investment Forum, the African Development Bank (AfDB) is scaling up its efforts to leverage financial resources from the private sector to help the continent meet its development needs. It is calculated that there is a need of USD 170 billion per annum to finance the Bank’s High 5s. The overall resourcing needs across the High5s over 2016-2025 are estimated at over USD 1 trillion. The Bank has committed to mobilize over USD 269 billion during the same period. The key distinguishing feature of the Forum will be the ability to mobilize private sector and policy interests to execute its mandate to crowd-in investments into Africa. African institutional investors, and pension funds, can play a key role in bridging this gap. MFW4A has been invited to co-lead the institutional investors workstream, which maps key markets in terms of the major players (e.g. AuM, regulation, investment strategy, capacity etc.) and formulates a plan for AIF to mobilize and encourage the participation of domestic institutional investors. The workstream also includes developing knowledge and research products and session around the Forum. The Africa Investment Forum, the African Development Bank, and its partners will accelerate private sector investments in Africa through a combination of: Pipeline Development: Pooling the collective efforts of development institutions to augment project pipelines, visibility, and deal screening. Partners will bring their respective projects on to the African Investment Forum platform; Project Preparation: Scaling up technical assistance, process harmonization, funding and grants for feasibility studies, structuring, training, and transactions advisory; Policy Environment: advocating institutional reforms and improving regulatory policies to promote policy certainty for the private sector actors; Project Bankability: Using the co-guarantee platform suite of credit enhancement tools to promote private and public sector co-investment; and Investment Promotion: Proactive investor engagement and market intelligence. For more information, please visit the event website.