The Africa Investment Forum is on the verge of signing about 303 deals and transactions that will see $208.8 billion investments coming to Africa.
The forum, with all the top financial and development institutions on the continent as members, also said it has been working on series of projects in the last several months to attract more bankable infrastructural projects to countries in the continent.
The President of African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, who disclosed this yesterday, also added that the forum had been working to change the perceptions of non-African investors on investment in the continent.
Dr Adesina spoke yesterday on behalf of heads of other financial and development institutions during a press conference at the ongoing Africa Investment Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa. “We have been working on series of projects over the last several months,” he said.
“So, what you will be seeing on this (AIF) platform is that we have 303 deals and transactions on the Africa Investment Forum platform that are worth $208.8 trillion,” he said.
According to Adesina, the forum is already working as an intermediary between project developers in Africa and prospective investors in and outside the continent.
He said that was in order to make investment in the continent durable and bridge the infrastructural gap, adding that “this is also to change how business gets done on the continent.”
“Our goal is not to just reel out figures, no. That is not our goal. Our goal is serious development of bankable projects. We don’t want hot investments again in Africa, we want stable, durable and bankable investments that will bring about real development of infrastructure in Africa, the AfDB boss stated.
He said all African financing and development institutions had resolved to pull their resources together to build infrastructure. “We want a total change of how we do business in Africa. And we are going to deploy our resources collectively to getting that done,” he assured.
