African lender prepares for global funding shifts

The African Finance Corporation said it was accelerating efforts to mobilise the continent’s own money for investments, and tapping investors in the Middle East and Asia, as developing nations grapple with seismic shifts in geopolitics and funding flows, reports CNBC Africa. Samaila Zubairu, chief executive of the AFC – a development finance institution owned by Nigeria’s central bank and other African financial institutions – said the lender was ready to weather a world in which the US and Europe cut financial aid and turned increasingly inward. ‘The only thing we want … to change, is to get domestic capital more available for investment within the continent,’ Zubairu said. ‘We would accelerate our initiatives to mobilise domestic capital from African pension funds, African institutional investors, to invest domestically,’ he said, adding that in the long term, some $15-$20bn could come from domestic pension funds. US President Donald Trump’s America First agenda, and cuts in US aid money, could drain billions from projects in Africa. European countries are also slashing aid funding, with Britain redirecting much of it to boost defence spending.

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