Portugal's Foreign Minister has said that his country is interested in extending the Lusophone Compact, an investment platform, to more African countries.

According to Gomes Cravinho, the initiative is being considered for countries such as South Africa, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ghana.

Quoted by the ECO portal, he said that the aim is to extend the term of the Lusophone Compact and make it applicable to those countries.

"These are countries where there is also interest in the relationship between cooperation and the Portuguese business community," he said.

The Lusophone Compact is a partnership between Portugal and the African Development Bank (AfDB), which aims to accelerate private sector growth and infrastructure development in the six Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP).

At a meeting held on Wednesday as part of the Portuguese minister's official visit to Côte d'Ivoire, the AfDB said it was "very pleased" with this initiative, which is "a somewhat innovative instrument with a lot of potential," it said.

The partnership was approved for five years, from 2018 to 2023, and in December it would come to an end, but the steering committee's orientation was that it would like to see it continue for 10 years, and there was an agreement in principle from the Portuguese government to continue supporting it, with the financial guarantee of 400 million euros for investments in the PALOP.

Investment projects worth around 7.5 billion dollars are currently being developed under this initiative, at various stages of implementation, in the six countries of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea, according to the AfDB.