- Ilias Djouai of Africa Finance Corporation urges stable regulation, regional cooperation and mobilisation of domestic capital to bridge Africa’s infrastructure gap.
- Key infrastructure sectors for growth include mobile towers, fibre networks and data centres, with institutional investor interest rising.
What happened: AFC’s push to finance Africa’s digital expansion
Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), represented by Ilias Djouai (vice-president of investments), emphasises the urgency of investing in digital infrastructure across Africa. Djouai identifies mobile telecom towers, fibre infrastructure and data centres as critical areas needing investment to close connectivity gaps. He notes that about 39% of Africans live outside mobile broadband coverage zones, according to GSMA data, illustrating the scale of need.
He observes that many telecom operators (for example MTN, Airtel) in several countries have sold their tower assets to tower-companies (“towercos”), shifting expansion responsibility to these infrastructure providers. However, towercos face financial strain in rural (“grey and white”) areas where lease income is low. Fibre deployment, though offering greater capacity and performance, is costlier due to civil works, regulatory complexity and long lead times. Despite these challenges, nearly US$50 billion has been invested in African infrastructure over the past thirteen years, with institutional investors now showing fresh interest in mature assets with profit potential.
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Why it’s important
Africa’s digital future rests not only on capital but also on enabling environments. Djouai argues that clear, consistent regulation and macroeconomic stability are necessary to attract the “higher risk equity and hybrid instruments” now becoming common among investors. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) and development finance institutions (DFIs) play a crucial role in de-risking projects and making them viable for private investment.
Domestic funding pools such as pensions, banks, sovereign wealth funds and remittances offer vast but under-utilised resources. Djouai cites that over US$1 trillion is controlled by pension funds alone, yet much of that remains off-limits for infrastructure financing. Mobilising this capital can reduce dependence on external sources, which often come with higher cost or conditionality.
There is also strategic importance in data centres and AI infrastructure: as African economies adopt digital services, cloud computing, and content delivery, reliable infrastructure becomes a bottleneck. This trend, combined with growing investor appetite, suggests positive momentum towards closing Africa’s connectivity and infrastructure divides. The need for scale, cross-border regulation harmonisation and local capital mobilisation makes this a decisive moment for Africa’s infrastructure boom.
