Samaila Zubairu, president and CEO of the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), has said Africa needs to get the right capital allocation for its huge infrastructure and industrial deficits.
Zubairu made this known at the AFC’s Country and Stakeholder Symposium tagged ‘Retaining Africa’s Capital for a Sustainable Future’ on Thursday.
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He said Africa requires new thinking and a different mindset to shift economic management, deploy strategies, and not only consider several ways that ensure the continent can sufficiently cover inputs but also ensure the development of the African continent with an intentional approach to finance infrastructure, value creation, and value retention.
“By harnessing our collective wisdom, experience, and resources, we can pave the way for a future where African capital is the cornerstone of our continent’s sustainable development as we embark on this division. I am confident that we will uncover innovative strategies and practical solutions to retain and grow our capital within the continent,” Zubairu added.
He said overcoming Africa’s capital challenge starts with the realisation that the Africans must take ownership of their growth and development. “It continues with intentional steps that we take to saturate transformational economies to capture or retain more value on the continent to stop the practice of exporting primary raw materials and move to higher-value items.”
“We not only capture or retain more value on the continent, but we’re also able to use that capital to make further investments in other more complex industries on the continent,” Zubairu stated.
Osman Celik, deputy minister of treasury and finance, in Turkey, said becoming the first regional shareholder in December last year was a historic landmark in their relations with African countries.
“At Turkey, we have made significant progress in many areas of our relations with African countries and many healers. demonstrate the importance we have given to Africa. Additionally, we want to build motion capacity-building mechanisms between the AFC and our institutions, and the exchange of confidence configured,” he said.
Sameh Shenouda, executive director and chief investment officer of AFC shared the 2023 economic outlook.
“We have invested in 10 countries and the largest country was Nigeria and the interesting thing, again, is another Pan African investment, so companies and projects that are in more than one country,” he said.
“Our product solutions activity which is supporting governments means the number of sovereign governments of Senegal and Egypt as well, and we have added three new countries,” Shenouda stated.
