The Africa Investment Forum will host virtual board sessions, a key component of the Africa Investment Forum's market days, next month after a postponement late last year, representatives of the initiative announced Thursday.
The boardrooms will be held virtually from March 15 to 17 this year to discuss and advance business in the 2021 pipeline. The third edition of the African Investment Forum was to have been held in a hybrid format in Abidjan in December 2021, but was postponed due to the emergence of the omicron variant of the covid-19 virus. Forty-five deals worth $57.4 billion were scheduled for discussions in the boardroom.
The announcement of the March event followed a meeting of the founding partners of the African Investment Forum, a multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary platform that advances public-private and private partnership projects to bankruptcy, raises capital, and accelerates deals to financial close.
In an open session, the African Investment Forum provided progress updates and previewed five agreements. These included: an investment to develop over 220 km of electricity transmission lines under a long-term public-private partnership agreement; a project with a ten-year target to roll out broadband infrastructure to over 800,000 residential and small business customers; and a project to establish a biomedical and pharmaceutical hub.
The 45 boardroom agreements provide for the creation of a total of 3.8 million jobs, both direct and indirect; of these, one million jobs will go to African women and women entrepreneurs, and another million to youth.
After the presentation, Senior Director of the Africa Investment Forum Chinelo Anohu said, "there is a vigorous commitment to move the Africa Investment Forum forward." Chinelo Anohu said that in addition to investments, the Africa Investment Forum was working to support an enabling environment in all African countries. "Good policies make good investments," he said.
The 160 participants at the meeting, representing investors and project preparation organizations, included Sarah Whitten of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, Preeti Sinha, the Executive Secretary of the UN Capital Development Fund, and Omar Ezzat of the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance.
The presentation was part of a two-day meeting of the founding partners of the African Investment Forum. Earlier on Thursday, the heads of the founding partners met to discuss developments and strategic areas of focus during the coming year. The eight founding partners are: the African Development Bank, which is also the host; Africa 50; the African Finance Corporation; the African Export-Import Bank; the Development Bank of Southern Africa; the Trade and Development Bank; the European Investment Bank; and the Islamic Development Bank.
African Development Bank President Akinwumi A. Adesina stressed the importance of prioritizing Africa's health security and sovereignty, based on three pillars: building quality health infrastructure; developing the continent's pharmaceutical industry; and increasing vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Adesina said he expected many of the founding partners of the African Investment Forum to play a role in the Alliance for Green Infrastructure initiative of the African Development Bank, the African Export-Import Bank, the African Union Commission and AUDA NEPAD. The partnership , which was announced on February 18 during the EU-AU Summit, will raise up to $500 million in capital for early stage project development and project preparation to catalyze greener and more bankable infrastructure projects at scale and speed.
The Bank chief praised the heads of the partners for coming together quickly in 2020 to launch a unified response to Covid-19, which was announced during the last meeting of the founding partners.
"In the future, we need to work together more closely to accelerate the pace of infrastructure investments," Adesina insisted.
Alain Ebobissé, head of Africa 50, cited the acceleration of capital flight during the pandemic and reiterated the need to galvanize domestic resource mobilization.
Other topics of discussion included the role of the African Continental Free Trade Area in developing regional markets and Africa's energy transition.
The African Investment Forum has closed 10 deals with a value of $3.1 billion, and currently has 136 deals with a total value of $87.52 billion in its portfolio.
Source: afdb