IN SHORT: The Africa Finance Corporation hosted its inaugural Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi on April 23 and 24, where African nations presented a $45.8 billion infrastructure pipeline covering railways, airports and renewable energy. AFC’s State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2026 found that Africa’s domestic capital pools now exceed $4 trillion, more than double the $1.7 trillion in cumulative external flows recorded between 2014 and 2024, but that 90% of projects still fail to reach financial close due to preparation gaps rather than capital shortages.
Africa’s infrastructure financing problem is not a shortage of capital. It is a failure to connect $4 trillion in domestic savings to bankable projects, the Africa Finance Corporation declared at its inaugural Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi on April 23, as African governments unveiled a $45.8 billion pipeline of railways, airports and energy projects and called for a structural shift in how the continent funds its own development.
The two-day summit, hosted by AFC in partnership with the Kenyan government at the JW Marriott Nairobi under the theme "Infrastructure as the Engine of Industrialisation," drew 500 senior delegates including heads of state, ministers, institutional investors, development finance institutions and infrastructure operators.
- AFC’s State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2026, launched at the summit, found that Africa’s non-bank domestic capital pools alone exceed $2 trillion, while the broader domestic capital stock across the continent tops $4 trillion. That figure surpasses the roughly $1.7 trillion in cumulative external flows recorded between 2014 and 2024, meaning Africa already holds more than enough internal savings to finance its own infrastructure gap. The problem is institutional: approximately 90% of African infrastructure projects fail to reach financial close because of weak project preparation, not insufficient capital.
- AFC CEO Samaila Zubairu delivered the summit’s defining line: "Africa is not capital-poor; it is capital-trapped. The opportunity now is to channel that capital into infrastructure and industry at scale, transforming resources into productivity, jobs, and long-term prosperity."
- Kenya’s President William Ruto, who delivered the keynote address, called on African nations to move decisively to connect their fragmented resource bases through coordinated infrastructure and policy. "Our countries possess complementary endowments: natural resources in one country, energy in another, optimal location for industrial processing in the next. These must be connected through roads, rail, ports and electricity grids so that raw materials and intermediate goods can move freely across borders." Ruto announced Kenya’s National Infrastructure Fund, a vehicle designed to mobilise KSh5 trillion ($38.7 billion) from institutional investors over the next decade without adding to government debt. JKIA airport modernisation, targeting expansion from 8.9 million to 22 million passengers by 2045 at a cost of $1.5 billion, was named as the fund’s first project.
- Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni attended alongside Ruto, underscoring the regional political weight behind the summit. AFC mobilised $2 billion from commercial banks and DFIs on the sidelines of the event to support early-stage financing of the projects presented.
- Among the major projects showcased: a regional railway connecting Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania; renewable energy projects across East and West Africa; port upgrades in multiple coastal states; and agro-industrial zones designed to anchor the AfCFTA’s trade integration agenda.
- Nigeria’s context reinforces the AFC finding. Nigeria’s pension industry alone held N29.4 trillion ($18.5 billion) by February 2026 according to PenCom data, and the regulator has been exploring infrastructure asset class diversification. Yet Nigeria faces an infrastructure deficit projected to reach $878 billion by 2040, and frequent power grid failures cost the economy an estimated $29 billion annually. The capital is present. The vehicle is not.
- AFC has a balance sheet of nearly $20 billion, has invested over $19 billion across 36 African countries since inception, and is positioning itself as the continent’s primary convener of bankable infrastructure capital, bridging the gap between domestic savings pools and project-ready opportunities.
The summit also served as the launchpad for Aliko Dangote’s announcement of a proposed 650,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery in Tanzania’s Tanga port, backed by Ruto and Museveni, which would process crude from DRC, South Sudan, Kenya and Uganda.
The Bigger Picture: The AFC’s $4 trillion finding is one of the most consequential data points in African finance in years. It demolishes the standard narrative that Africa needs foreign capital to build its infrastructure. The continent has the savings. What it has lacked are the institutional vehicles, the project preparation capacity, and the political frameworks to deploy those savings productively. The Africa We Build Summit is a bet that changing the conversation, from "how do we attract foreign capital" to "how do we unlock our own," is the first step toward changing the outcome. Whether it produces follow-through or becomes another summit of ambitious declarations will be tested in the next 24 months.
Source: Bloomberg / Ecofin Agency / AFC press release
