It's time to move beyond Africa's potential, says AFC chief

One might assume that calling Africa “a continent full of potential” is praise. But Samaila Zubairu, president and CEO of the Africa Finance Corporation, said that framing makes it sound as if Africa’s value lies only in the future. In reality, the resources, talent, and opportunities already exist today — the potential is here now. “We need to find ways to intentionally transform that potential to progress and prosperity for all our people, because there's so much that Africa can offer to the world,” he said at Devex Impact House on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings. “And as Africans, we must lead in demonstrating through the examples of successful projects and enterprises that we build that indeed we can have prosperity — and that can only be done by investment, not aid.” In fact, Zubairu said he’s “actually happy” the U.S. aid cuts happened, a sentiment that dovetails with his long-running belief that Africa needs to invest in itself. “I've always believed in African agency. I've believed in Africans taking ownership of our development. I've never understood the whole aid quest,” he said, though he adds that the suddenness of the cuts has created shocks. “Some kind of transition would have been helpful, but we didn't have that. So we have to work with what we have,” he said. “Let's focus on solutions of how we move forward, from where we are today to where we are going tomorrow.” For Zubairu, part of the solution lies not with attracting outside private capital, but with first tapping Africa’s own resources to invest in its development — thereby creating an appealing market for the private sector to then enter and scale. It all starts with the $4 trillion of domestic capital pools that the Africa Finance Corporation estimates the continent holds, in the form of pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, for example. To tap into those types of funds, Zubairu said Africa needs “to build institutional execution,” enact policy reforms “that would ensure specific asset allocation for infrastructure,” and focus on “risk innovation to ensure that the savers are comfortable to make the investment.” Part of the Africa Finance Corporation’s role in that process is “turning complexity into structures we can finance;” bankable projects such as the Lobito corridor, an ambitious, multipartner endeavor that links the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to the western coast of Angola — with the primary aim of transporting critical minerals. The Lobito corridor — whose lead developer is the Africa Finance Corporation — is a rare example of a project once backed by the Biden administration whose appeal has carried over to the Trump administration. Zubairu told Devex that he’s had meetings with the State Department and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, among others, which indicated the project is a priority. He said larger multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, should also be supporting development finance institutions such as the Africa Finance Corporation. “So instead of the World Bank trying to do a larger office in Africa, they should be looking at a partnership with AFC,” Zubairu said. “They should look at partnerships with other African multilateral banks based on the areas that they want to intervene, and channel those investments through those agencies, because we are on the ground. That is our market. That's where we operate. … We'll continue to invest in the continent.”