Driving Africa’s competitiveness and industrialization

The AFC has been created to help drive Africa’s competitiveness by banking on the region’s long-term growth prospects.

More than ever before, there is a new sense of optimism for Africa’s economic growth prospects. Africa’s GDP growth is estimated at 5.5 percent in 2006 and is expected to rise to nearly 6 percent in 2007-2008. But while growth is accelerating, Africa remains the slowest growing region in the world over the past five decades. Studies have shown that relatively low capital investment has been one of the main contributors to Africa’s disappointing growth over the period. Africa also lags far behind the rest of the world on measures of competitiveness. Sub-Saharan Africa is on average outperformed by all comparators in seven out of the nine pillars, namely infrastructure, health and primary education, higher education and training, market efficiency, technological readiness, business sophistication and innovation.

By helping to develop core economic building blocks such as power, infrastructure and transport, AFC will play a major role in enhancing the competitiveness of the African continent.

This value proposition can be summarized as

- A large capital base created by its $1bn in start up capital and access to cheap international capital.
- An unrivalled local knowledge and relationships in government and industry
- A world class pool of talent and best practice experience

AFC uses these advantages to increase local private sector participation and promote strategic investment in oil and gas, mining and heavy industries, which provide the bedrock for industrial development. It also seeks to maximize the linkages of industrial projects to infrastructure development.

In order to realise the economic potentials and commercial viability of Africa’s natural resource endowments, the AFC provides project finance for their extraction, transportation and marketing. It also proactively develops, structures and syndicates financing for projects.