A fresh push is under way to bring more private money into emerging markets. On 1 October, 30 multilateral development banks and development finance institutions adopted new common methodologies designed to improve how private capital mobilisation is measured and increased. This promising move comes just two weeks after the World Bank Group reported a record $112 billion mobilised in FY2026, including around $22 billion across Africa – nearly 150% more than four years earlier.
Encouragingly, the broader economic backdrop is also strengthening. On 6 October, the World Bank raised its 2026 growth forecast for Sub-Saharan Africa to 4.3%, up from the 4.1% expected in April. However, the scale of the continent’s financing needs remains formidable, with the African Development Bank (AfDB) estimating an annual gap of roughly $400 billion for structural transformation. In short, capital is increasingly interested in Africa, but connecting that liquidity with viable opportunities across the continent remains a significant challenge.
Moving forward, bridging this gap will increasingly require the innovative work of African financial intermediaries and investment platforms. In West Africa, Constantin Dabiré is pursuing this objective through SA2IF, for which he serves as President and CEO, and SITEXCO in Canada. Elsewhere, leaders including Africa50 chief executive Alain Ebobissé and Africa Finance Corporation President and CEO Samaila Zubairu are developing complementary models designed to turn regional expertise, project pipelines and institutional relationships into vehicles capable of attracting capital at scale.
The financing gap behind Africa’s investment promise
Africa’s strong appeal to international investors is not difficult to understand – the continent combines a young and growing market with major infrastructure requirements and opportunities spanning energy, logistics, digital infrastructure, agriculture and manufacturing. Last year, UN Trade and Development recorded roughly $70 billion in African FDI – the third-highest level since 1990 and roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average – while the number of announced greenfield projects increased, even as their combined value declined.
Yet these headline figures can obscure how difficult capital remains to access for many economies, businesses and projects. The World Bank’s latest mobilisation figures illustrate that imbalance: while private capital mobilised across Africa rose sharply, World Bank Group-mobilised private capital in low-income countries globally remained at around $3 billion. Crucially, investors must still navigate currency exposure, regulatory uncertainty, project-preparation challenges and credit or political risk, while smaller markets can struggle to produce transactions large enough for major institutional investors.
This context makes Africa’s financing challenge increasingly a question of intermediation as much as capital scarcity. The World Bank has been expanding guarantees, local currency financing and mechanisms for packaging investments for institutional investors, while the AfDB recently called for deeper capital markets, stronger public-private partnerships and more effective mobilisation of domestic savings. Essentially, the aim is to turn local opportunities into structures that investors can understand, assess and finance, while ensuring that global capital is matched with the projects where it can create lasting economic value.
Building bridges between local markets and global investors
This logic lies at the centre of Constantin Dabiré’s work. Drawing on more than two decades of experience in finance, including financial advisory at the West African Development Bank, Constantin Dabiré has built his recent ventures around a clear objective to connect international capital more effectively with opportunities in West African markets. In 2022, he founded SA2IF, a licensed financial intermediation and portfolio-management company operating across the West African Economic and Monetary Union financial market, with services including fundraising, financial engineering and managed securities portfolios. The firm’s presence in Ouagadougou and Abidjan reflects Dabiré’s emphasis on proximity to businesses, institutions and regional markets, helping him combine institutional experience with local market insight to bridge West African financing needs with international investor requirements.
SITEXCO, based out of Canada, extends that approach internationally, working across advisory, resource mobilisation, financial intermediation and project engineering, and providing a platform through which Dabiré aims to connect African financing needs with investors beyond the continent. More broadly, Dabiré’s approach reflects a wider imperative for African finance to pair deep local market knowledge with international networks, giving investors greater confidence in less familiar markets while widening access to capital.
Other African institutions are applying similar principles at scale. Under Alain Ebobissé, Africa50 has focused on developing investable infrastructure platforms and mobilising long-term institutional money, with its Infrastructure Acceleration Fund reaching around $330 million in 2026, backed by development institutions and more than 20 African institutional investors. Meanwhile, Samaila Zubairu’s Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has combined regional ownership with international fundraising, securing a record $2 billion syndicated loan in June from banks across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa to expand its infrastructure and industrial investment capacity.
Together, these approaches illustrate that mobilising capital is not only about raising larger sums, but about building institutions capable of translating African opportunities into propositions that different classes of investors can finance. Under Alain Ebobissé’s leadership, Africa50 has pursued infrastructure platforms designed to create greater scale and repeatability, while Samaila Zubairu has positioned AFC as an African-led institution capable of attracting substantial international financing and building credibility with global lenders. Alongside more locally-anchored intermediaries such as SA2IF and Sitexco, these models form complementary layers of the financial ecosystem needed to move capital from intention to investment.
Turning capital momentum into lasting impact
Looking ahead, transforming this progress into a deeper and more durable flow of investment will clearly require action on both sides of the market. Governments and regulators can notably make opportunities easier to finance through predictable rules, stronger governance and procurement, deeper regional capital markets and clearer frameworks around foreign exchange. Complementing this public sector foundation, development institutions can continue using guarantees, blended finance and local currency instruments to absorb risks that private investors cannot efficiently carry alone.
Meanwhile, financial intermediaries can strengthen project pipelines, improve the quality of information available to investors and match opportunities with institutions whose mandates correspond to their risk, duration and return profiles. Greater regional integration is equally vital, as aggregating opportunities across national markets can help create the scale sought by pension funds, insurers and asset managers, while allowing smaller economies and companies to compete more effectively for international capital.
The new mobilisation frameworks launched this month, together with the World Bank’s record African figures, show that global finance is becoming more serious about putting private capital to work across developing markets. The next test is whether this momentum can reach a broader range of African businesses and projects. Ultimately, success will depend not simply on attracting more money, but on building the institutions and financial bridges capable of directing it towards productive, sustainable growth.
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