Africa50 Seeks to Whip Up Infrastructure Funding Across Africa During Shareholders’ Meeting 2026
The Africa50 Shareholders’ Meeting was held at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Center in Dar es Salaam from 5 to 6 August 2026. Tanzania’s President Samia Hassan and several other African heads of state and government attended the Meeting. In addition, several banks and funds such as AfDB, Afreximbank, Standard Bank, EcoBank, Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, Kenya’s Centum Investment, and UK BII also participated. Altogether, over 1,200 delegates took part in the Meeting, which had as its theme ‘A Decade of Impact: From Visions to Delivery.’
The British International Investment (BII) announced that it is committing USD 20 million to the Africa50 Infrastructure Acceleration Fund on the 3rd of August 2026, just before the start of the Meeting.. The Fund targets projects such as power & energy, water & sanitation, transport & logistics, and digital & social platforms.
The plenary focused on leveraging pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and domestic financial institutions to finance large-scale infrastructure projects across the continent. The general tone of the discussion was a shift from external to internal financing.
“Delivering infrastructure at the speed and scale the continent requires, depends on mobilizing long-term private and institutional capital through strong partnerships. BII’s commitment to the Africa50 Infrastructure Acceleration Fund reflects our shared ambition to scale infrastructure investment, strengthen project delivery, and accelerate sustainable economic development across Africa.”
Africa50 CEO Alain Ebobissé
“Africa’s infrastructure financing gap remains of the biggest barriers to sustainable growth and development across the continent. Our investment in the Africa50 Infrastructure Acceleration Fund reflects our commitment to mobilizing more capital into the infrastructure Africa needs to support businesses, create jobs, and impove lives.”
BII CEO Leslie Maasdorp
With BII’s contribution in this fourth round, the Fund has now reached approximately USD 330 million. The main financiers are the African Development Bank, the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, and more than 20 African institutional investors. Africa50 aims to raise USD 500 million as ‘seed capital’ for infrastructure.
Since its founding a decade ago, Africa50 has successfully seeded 36 projects across 34 African countries, and managed to mobilize nearly USD 9 billion. Africa50 has managed to transform concepts into bankable projects and accelerated the project lifecycle from idea to implementation.
However, Africa needs tens of billions of dollars for its infrastructure development. Therefore, Africa50’s role is mostly to act as a catalyzer for channel more funds to support Africa’s development. One of the preferred pathways to financing is to whip up more Public-Private Partnerships (#PPP) to derisk and mobilize investments.