Luanda Summit Mobilizes $18B for African Infrastructure
The 3rd Financing Summit on Financing for Infrastructure Development in Africa managed to secure financing to the tune of USD 18 billion for nearly 50 projects. The Summit is co-hosted by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD). For this edition, the theme was: “Capital, Corridors, Trade: Investing in Infrastructure for the AfCFTA and Shared Prosperity.”
The 18 billion dollar will be allocated to 38 projects which have been pre-selected and deemed bankable. Another set of 11 similar projects under the AU’s Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) will also received funding.
“The lesson from Dakar is clear: we can no longer treat financing as a fragmented marketplace of scattered deals. We must transform it to a unified strategy where member states work together and development finance institutions challe that capital into bankable projects… This Summit has corrected a longstanding imbalance. For too long, Africa’s immense financial power, our savings, our sovereign welath, our institutional capital, has been passive in the story of our own development. That chapter, hopefully, is being closed now.”
AUDA-NEDPAD CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas
Commissioner Bekele-Thomas underlined that the innovation this year in on cross-border #EconomicCorridors as an instrument for regional integration which is pieces of the puzzle that will make up the AfCFTA. Therefore, it is important to coordinate ‘policies, permits, guarantees, and governance’ to achieve such regional initiatives.
Another key push included in the Joint Declaration is the motivation for African governments to leverage domestic institutional capital such as social security assets, sovereign wealth and insurance funds, for funding infrastructure. Actually, AUDA-NEPAD has been calling for African states to allocate at least 5% of their assets under management (AUM) to the development of infrastructure projects.
In summary, this Summit achieved three major goals: deals were sealed, policies were directed, and Africa assets were mobilized to close the infrastructure financing gap. It is estimated that the African continent would need to spend some USD 150 billion annually on infrastructure in the foreseeable future.
Collecting data from the dealromms, the projects discussed can be categorized as follows: #EconomicCorridors ($25B), #ElectricityAccess ($15B) , #WaterSecurity ($2.7B), and #Digitalization ($1.2B).
“Luanda has once again shown the spirit of pan-African leadership, visionary determination and united purpose. Heads of State and Government will continue to remind us that Africa can, and will, plan, finance and deliver the foundation of its own prosperity.
AU Commisioner for Infrastructure Merato Mtaboge
The Luanda Declaration makes reference to: Trans-African Highways (#TAH), African Integrated Railway Network (#AIRN), African Single Electricity Market (#ASEM), and the Presidential Infrastructure Champions Initiative to name a few continent-wide programs.
AUDA-NEPAD plans to present the revitalized Presidential Infrastructure Champions Initiative and the Unified Capital Strategy for formal endorsement at the next AU Summit in February 2026.