Expectations Soar As Africa Investment Forum Market Days Draw Closer

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – As preparations for this year’s Africa Investment Forum Market Days gather momentum, expectations are high, particularly amongst the Forum’s founding partners and stakeholders in the financial sector.

Taking place in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from 2 to 4 November, the Africa Investment Forum 2022 (AIF2022), will be Africa’s largest transactional investment marketplace. It will bring together deal sponsors, deal brokers and deal makers from around the world.

This year’s event will be the first face-to-face gathering since AIF2019. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of the 2020 Market Days, while the Omicron variant led to the AIF2021 being postponed to March 2022.

Despite this drawback, much work has been done leading up to the Africa Investment Forum Market Days 2022. Notably, all eyes will be on AIF2022, where investment interest is expected to convert many more transactions to closure.

The objective is to foster productive engagements between the public and private sectors. The Africa Investment Forum has continued to provide investors with access to a funding platform, offering bankable and de-risked projects within an enabling environment.

Under the Unified Covid-19 Response, the Forum’s founding partners, which include AfDB, Africa 50, Africa Finance Corporation, Afreximbank, Development Bank of Southern Africa, European Investment Bank, Islamic Development Bank and Trade and Development Bank, identified 13 projects across five relevant sectors for funding consideration.

Interestingly, these projects have a collective value of $3.68 billion, with each project helping advance Africa’s self-sufficiency and resilience against future shocks.

Moreover, the Forum’s Deal Tracker mechanism has continued to monitor the conversion of investment interests into financing commitments. It has done so while accelerating the investment allocation process for deals moving towards financial closure.

Ten transactions from the 2018 and 2019 Boardroom portfolios made up of deals valued at $3.1 billion had successfully reached deal closure by 2021 year-end. The AfDB is partly financing six of these deals, with the Bank contributing a cumulative financing of $225.7 million to close the funding gap in these deals.

Meanwhile, the ten closed AIF transactions are; Multinational African Infrastructure Investment Fund, Multinational African Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Rwanda Gabiro Agri-Business Hub Phase 1, South Africa Beef Agro-processing Project, Togo Lomé New Thermal Power Plant.

Others are, Ghana COCOBOD, Multinational Alitheia IDF Fund, Multinational Facility for Energy Inclusion Multinational AfriInvest IV and the Nigeria Infrastructure Credit Guarantee Company Limited.

In March this year, the Forum held its Virtual Boardrooms, where 45 projects worth up to $50 billion were presented and discussed. Eight of these were women-led with a value of nearly $5 billion. The Boardrooms resulted in $32.8 billion in investment interest.

Transformative Boardroom transactions include a $79 million biomedical and pharmaceutical hub; a $348 million biomass power plant; a $140 million oncology hospital; a $454 million fibre optic project; a $140 million film and performing arts academy; a $65 million innovative telemedicine project; a $450 million technology village; a $4.2 billion freight railway project; and a $4.5 billion East Africa refinery fuel project.

In addition, outreach to global and local investors has continued. Since the AIF’s Boardrooms in March, investor roadshows have taken place in the United States, Europe and Africa. This included a dedicated women-centred investment roundtable in partnership with the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA.

Interest has been high, with many investors seeking to participate or committing to participate in this November’s Africa Investment Forum Market Days.

Born out of Africa’s need for a premier and pivotal platform for attracting domestic and foreign direct investment to the continent, the goals of the Forum’s multi-stakeholder, multidisciplinary platform are to: advance projects to bankable stages, raise capital and accelerate the financial closure of deals.