Africa Finance Corp eyeing $3 bln deals in a year

Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a Lagos-based development financier, is considering potential investments worth $3 billion across sub-Saharan Africa over the next year, its chief executive said on Monday.
Created in 2007 to help increase much-needed investments in the key infrastructure, transport and heavy industries sectors in Africa, AFC – 46 percent-owned by seven west African states including Nigeria and Ghana – has already invested $500 million in projects worth a total $4 billion from Cape Verde to Zambia.
“In our sectors we see a lot of opportunities. We are currently reviewing investments totalling $3 billion across the continent. That is what our pipeline is,” Andrew Alli told Reuters in the Kenyan capital. These are projects from Senegal down to Mozambique. Virtually every country in sub-Sahara Africa has a power deficit so there is obviously quite a lot of opportunity in power.”
Alli said AFC – part of a growing phenomenon of Africans investing in their own continent – also looks for a commercial return on its investments, was looking to conclude the potential deals soon. It is almost certain that we won’t invest in all of them but we would expect to review them and close them over the course of the next year or so,” he said.
Alli, whose organisation invested $50 million in Kenyan cement firm Athi River Mining this year, praised the Kenyan government for policies aimed at encouraging private investments in the energy sector. We see potential for electricity investments in Kenya and particularly for renewables, both geothermal and also wind,” Alli said, adding that they were in talks with other firms they could invest in.