Women-led businesses

Abdelmonem Fawzi

Institutional investors coming together to engage in dialogue with companies on environmental, social and governance issues is an effective and powerful way to increase influence.

Collaboration can also help address more structural investment stewardship issues, such as free-riding, where everyone benefits from the activities performed, regardless of the amount of work they put in.

We have seen great progress in this endeavour towards increased collaboration in recent years, most prominently exemplified by Africa Investment Forum’s Market Days.

The good news is that it has 118 deals in its pipeline from all eight founding members, with an investment value of over $110 billion.

However, this is an initiative of the African Development Bank Group and seven other partners, all of which sourced potential transactions from their pipelines for boardroom sessions.

So, it is a multi-stakeholder investment platform.

Expectations had been high, following the postponement of the Market Days – Africa’s premier investment platform and event – last December.

The event was pushed back to March because of the emergence of the Omicron variant.

Covid-10 also caused the cancellation of the 2020 Africa Investment Forum Market Days.

Healthcare has emerged as a key priority of Africa Investment Forum partners, since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In February 2022, the African Development Bank produced a healthcare infrastructure strategy as part of its plan to mount a health care defense system for Africa.

The three-day virtual boardroom meetings showcased 40 projects across several sectors.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank Group, said Africa was clearly back for investments as the Covid-19 pandemic gradually receded.

The outstanding results from the virtual boardrooms confirmed robust interest in a range of economic sectors that offer a high return on investment as well as high social impact for Africans.

Key sectors included transport, gas and energy, healthcare, agriculture, information and communication technology.

Specific boardroom sessions focused on Africa’s creative industries and women-led businesses.

Adesina stressed the importance of growing women businesses and affirmed the African Development Bank Group’s commitment to supporting women entrepreneurs.

He said that the African Development Bank had established a $1 million women’s advisory facility, the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) programme.

AFAWA supports women-led businesses with advisory services. “Women-led businesses must grow and dominate across Africa,” Adesina said.

Following the unveiling of results, Adesina and the heads of the Africa Investment Forum partner organizations spoke about boardroom projects and Africa’s economic recovery.

Admassu Tadesse, president emeritus and group managing director and CEO of the Trade and Development Bank said the momentum has come back.

“The rebound has happened and of course now we need to sustain it by ensuring that these key projects start to happen,” he said.

Tadesse cited a ‘green share’ instrument that the Trade and Development Bank had worked on that would drive the climate finance agenda.

Group Executive, Mohan Vivekanandan, said a lot of the capital that Africa needs is in the continent.

“It is about us creating the opportunities for that capital to flow, because once that happens it will create investment opportunities, jobs and sustained economic growth,” Vivekanandan said.

Denys Denya, executive vice-president of finance, administration and banking services at the Africa Export-Import Bank, representing the institution’s President, Professor Benedict Oramah, said: “We are excited by the fact that government ministers and policymakers participated in the Africa Investment Forum boardroom sessions, because we need the public sector and the private sector to work together to deliver on these projects that are urgent for our continent. The Lagos-Abidjan highway is very critical for us because we are a trade finance bank”.

Speaking for Africa Finance Corporation President and CEO Samaila Zubairu, Senior Director Taiwo Adeniji said: “As a founding partner, the Africa Finance Corporation remains committed to the Africa Investment Forum, which continues to play a key role in catalyzing projects on the continent. Given the acute infrastructure deficit in Africa, support for the Forum is critical in unlocking the substantial investments required to address the deficit”.

Ambroise Fayolle, vice-president of the European Investment Bank, represented EIB President Werner Hoyer.

Fayolle said he was impressed, but not surprised, by the outcomes of the boardroom deliberations.

He also said that the European Investment Bank had launched a new arm, EIB Global.

“EIB Global wants to do more investment projects in Africa. It will strengthen engagement, partnerships and new investment across Africa,” he said. “We are very pleased to do that with the optimism I heard tonight.”

The Africa Investment Forum 2022 Market Days will take place physically in Abidjan from the 2nd to the 4th of November.

The growing success of this event gives credence to the exhortation to investors by Dr A. Adesina, who said Africa must be respected today as the world’s investment frontier.