Johannesburg, 6 August 2025 – Africa Investor (Ai) today announced its support for South Africa’s G20 Presidency in tackling one of the most pressing structural barriers to the continent’s economic transformation: Africa’s disproportionately high cost of capital.
Despite the continent’s vast industrial and green growth potential, African economies continue to pay unjustifiably high capital premiums. This systemic mispricing has blocked trillions of dollars in long-term institutional investment from flowing into Africa’s green industrial infrastructure — now recognised as a globally competitive and scalable investable asset class.
“Fixing Africa’s cost of capital is not just an African issue — it is a global investment imperative. Repricing risk, scaling private investment, and driving industrial growth are essential to mobilise the long-duration capital required to deliver Africa’s transformation and the world’s climate goals.” said Dr Hubert Danso, Chairman of Africa Investor
Ai confirmed it is working alongside partners including ONE, Africa Practice, Standard Bank, and leading global institutional investor coalitions, to call for urgent action at the G20, African Union, and COP30 platforms. The coalition is pressing for:
- Repricing of sovereign and infrastructure risk to correct systemic distortions;
- Unlocking long-term private capital at an institutional scale;
- Accelerating Africa’s green industrial value chains in line with national priorities and global climate commitments.
For institutional investors, consultants, policymakers, and development partners, the message is clear: it is time to make development investable. That requires disciplined, risk-adjusted capital flows into productive real-economy assets that generate jobs, growth, and resilience.
Ai underscored the role of Institutional Investor–Public Partnerships (IIPPs) and the GEMs3.0 platform as critical innovations to reprice Africa’s risk and unlock its full investment potential at scale.
“Governments are overpaying and universal owners are underachieving,” Dr Danso concluded. “The G20 process provides the platform to fix both.”
