 African leaders at the 2019 edition of the AIF |
ABIDJAN, Feb 26 (NNN-GNA) — The Africa Investment Forum will host virtual boardroom sessions, a key component of the Africa Investment Forum market days, next month, following a postponement late last year, representatives of the initiative announced.
The boardrooms will be held virtually from March 15 to 17 this year to discuss and advance deals in the 2021 pipeline.
The third edition of the Africa Investment Forum was due to be 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 have been curated for the boardroom discussions.
The announcement of the March event followed a meeting of the founding partners of the Africa Investment Forum, a multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary platform that advances private and public-private-partnership projects to bankability, raises capital, and accelerates deals to financial closure.
In an open session, the Africa Investment Forum provided progress updates and previewed five deals. These included: an investment to develop over 220 km of electric transmission lines under a long term public-private partnership agreement; a project with a ten-year goal to roll out broadband infrastructure to over 800,000 residential and small business customers; and a project for the establishment of a biomedical and pharmaceutical hub.
The 45 boardroom deals are projected to create 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 one million to youth.
The 160 participants in the meeting, representing investors and project preparation organizations, included Sarah Whitten of the United States 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 eight founding partners are the African Development Bank, which is also the host; Africa 50; the Africa 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.
The Africa Investment Forum has brought 10 deals with a value of $3.1 billion to closure, and currently has 136 deals with a total value of $87.52 billion in its portfolio. — NNN-GNA
