Each year, innumerable forums are organized in and outside Africa, all geared toward attracting business to the continent. The rhetoric around these business forums has been consistent – the usual exhortations to the international business community about attractive dividends for doing business in country x or y. Conferences have often been headlined by PR slogans such as Africa Rising, Africa open for busines, or the future of business is in Africa.
Businesspeople, policymakers and sometimes heads of government have typically graced these forums with their presence. Rhetoric, of which there is no small share, is often about reformed country investment codes and fresh new incentives for doing business. But many forums have proven to be little more than annual talk shops, with few if any leading to the influx of foreign direct investment desired.
Cutting through the endless rhetoric and tiring of a business as usual approach, African Development Bank President Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina, along with co-founder Africa50, Afrexim Bank, the Africa Finance Corporation, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the European Investment Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, and the Trade Development Bank, established the Africa Investment Forum in 2018.
The collective weight of the Africa Investment Forum remains one of its distinctive features and comparative advantages.
The Forum is a transactional, multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary platform designed to raise capital for serious investments in Africa. Its objective was and remains to prepare bankable investment projects and speed up the closing of financial deals on the continent.
Since 2018, the Africa Investment Forum has become a favored annual business and investor gathering for smart regional and global investors.
The forum’s model has sidestepped the business events that are long on talk and short on investment deals.
The Africa Investment Forum’s three-day ‘Market-Days’ facilitates transactional conversations between project sponsors, investors and the policy makers at the highest levels of government. It eliminates specific policy and regulatory bottlenecks, which have had a tendency to impede the advancement of investment projects.
The inaugural Africa Investment Forum Market Days in 2018 produced 63 deals valued at $46.9 billion across 24 African countries. The 2019 edition raised the bar even further, bringing together 2,291 participants across 100 countries in a marketplace that offered curated products, and 57 boardroom deals valued at $67.7 billion from 25 countries.
Beyond its signature boardrooms, the Forum supports project sponsors through a deal-tracker mechanism, which monitors and facilitates the conversion of investment interests to financing commitments. The Forum’s credibility remains its ability to match deals to investors and ensure successful boardroom outcomes.
Investor activity is not limited to the three days of the forum. Long after the annual Market-Days conclude, the Forum actively addresses residual bankability gaps, and offers advisory support, deal structuring, and the tracking of deals to accelerate closure. This has resulted in $3.124 billion worth of boardroom deals, which have so far fully secured investments and closed on the platform from both 2018 and 2019.
This year, the Forum holds its 2021 Market Days in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire from 1-3 December in a hybrid format. Some participants will take part in curated boardroom sessions in Abidjan, while others will participate virtually. The occasion promises to be another significant draw for investors. No less than 10 African presidents are confirmed to attend, as well as key investors and businesses.
The 2021 theme, Accelerating transformative investments in Africa, reflects the urgent need to attract greater inflows of private capital into business and investment across Africa, a need that has been sharpened since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Discussions are expected to focus on agriculture and agro-processing, energy, climate, health, ICT and telecommunications, and industrialization and trade as well as initiatives in the creative sector, and women-led enterprises. The sectors are prioritized under the Forum’s Unified Response to Covid-19 initiative, launched in 2020.
Investment projects enhanced by the Forum speak for themselves. Ghana’s Cocoa Board, for example, has expanded production by a million tonnes each year thanks to a $600 million deal struck at the African Investment Forum Market Days 2018. Before the infusion of capital at the Forum, its Cocobod Productivity Enhancement Program, syndicated by the African Development Bank, had struggled to gain investor traction. Lenders had initially been leery of committing to a state-owned enterprise. But at the Africa Investment Forum Market Days, the program successfully attracted much needed commercial and development finance institution lenders.
Senior Ghanaian government officials, led by President Akufo-Addo, provided comfort to investors, assuring them of the adequacy of cocoa beans to ensure sufficient supply for both global and local processors. They also provided assurances regarding parliamentary non-objection on regulatory and legal enforceability of relevant government commitments. Today, the project is poised to bring substantial transformation to Ghana’s agricultural sector.
Another project that has benefitted from the Africa Investment Forum is Mozambique’s $20 billion integrated liquefied natural gas plant. The African Development Bank is lending $400 million to the project, which is Africa’s largest ever foreign direct investment and a central pillar of Mozambique’s economic development strategy.
As the African Development Bank and its co-founding partners welcome investors to the 2021 edition of the Forum’s Market Days, some 47 investment projects are being curated for this year’s boardrooms. They include an East African rail corridor, a trans-continental highway from Lagos to Abidjan and dozens of other projects covering various asset classes including creatives, health, energy, power, mining, and women-led initiatives. The bid size could reach approximately $40.2 billion.
The innovative and globally distinctive Forum expects to continue a welcome tradition of curating the best deals, matching investors with projects, and scaling up development to improve the quality of life for millions of Africans.
