The Unmovable Trillions

Africa does not lack capital. African institutional investors hold more than $4 trillion, yet most of it sits in government bonds or foreign assets rather than in the infrastructure the continent needs. The Finance & Capital chapter of the Africa CEO Playbook argues that this is a design problem: what is missing are the instruments, vehicles, ratings and local-currency tools that turn domestic savings into long-term investment.

The evidence shows that African infrastructure is systematically mispriced. Its 10-year project-finance default rate of 4.8% is comparable to OECD markets, yet its cost of capital is around 5 percentage points higher, a premium driven by perception rather than performance.

The chapter sets out how to close that gap: shifting development finance institutions from originate-to-hold to originate-to-distribute, crowding in domestic pension funds and insurers, using credit enhancement to break the sovereign bond trap (as InfraCredit has done in Nigeria and now in Kenya), and building the investor confidence that makes every next deal cheaper to finance.

A practical roadmap for business leaders, investors and policymakers ready to unlock African capital at scale.