AFC Invests $11.5bn In 36 African Countries

Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), Africa’s leading infrastructure solutions provider, said it has invested US$11.5 billion in 36 countries across Africa since inception.

This is as the company increased its profit by 36 per cent to US$285.9 million in the 2022 financial year, and also boosted operating income by 54 per cent to US$400.4 million, and improved the liquidity coverage ratio to 202 per cent.

The company, in its latest financial results, said it recorded an outstanding performance in its latest financial year, with total assets growing 23 per cent to US$10.5 billion and the Corporation realising its five-year growth target a year early.

AFC president & CEO, Samaila Zubairu, said: ”To scale up our development impact across Africa, in 2018 we set out to more than double the Corporation’s total assets from US$4.5 billion to US$10 billion, improve our return on equity from seven per cent to over 12 per cent, and broaden our investment footprint on the continent in terms of geography and sector concentration, all within a five-year period. I am pleased to report that we have met and, in some cases, exceeded our targets on all of these pillars, well ahead of our end-2023 target for achieving the strategy’s objectives.”

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AFC’s pan-African reach expanded through investments in 36 countries, and accession to the Corporation by seven additional member states—Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Somalia, South Sudan, Tunisia, and Ethiopia—taking the total number of member states to 40, three-quarters of the continent.

Also, four new sovereign shareholders, Egypt, Mauritius, Cote D’Ivoire and DRC, helped increase total equity by 21 per cent, to US$2.67 billion from a total of 37 equity investors.

AFC’s consistently strong performance has been achieved by investing in projects that blend meaningful development impact with high risk-adjusted returns, leveraging the Corporation’s talent and execution culture to achieve its mandate of building the infrastructure required to foster industrialisation in Africa.

Zubairu,said that notable project investments in 2022 included AFC’s joint acquisition of Lekela Power, Africa’s largest renewables-focused independent power producer; co-development of the Nyanza Light Metals titanium dioxide plant in South Africa; scaling up the number of countries in ARISE IIP from three countries to several African countries; and participation in a EUR650 million financing for Société Africaine de Raffinage, the national refinery of Senegal.

In response to global supply chain vulnerability and other economic challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine conflict, AFC launched a US$2 billion facility to support economic recovery and resilience in Africa, helping to drive a new phase of growth that is focused on maximising resource value capture and domestic job creation.

AFC remains committed to accelerating structural transformation, value-addition and industrialization to transform lives and usher in Africa’s era of prosperity. This is in conjunction with AFC’s stated policy of developing and de-risking critical infrastructure projects that support value addition of primary products at source and the development of viable economic zones to boost local capacity and job creation.

“AFC is well positioned to continue playing a key role in delivering on our African-wide development mandate and helping to close the continent’s infrastructure gap,” said Zubairu. “We are entering this year with a focus on strengthening and building collaborative partnerships that deliver measurable developmental impact, anchored in our belief that Africa holds the solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.”

AFC was established in 2007 to be the catalyst for private sector-led infrastructure investment across Africa. AFC’s approach combines specialist industry expertise with a focus on financial and technical advisory, project structuring, project development, and risk capital to address Africa’s infrastructure development needs and drive sustainable economic growth.

16 years on, AFC has developed a track record as the partner of choice in Africa for investing and delivering on instrumental, high-quality infrastructure assets that provide essential services in the core infrastructure sectors of power, natural resources, heavy industry, transport, and telecommunications.