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Professor of Project Management at the Telfer School of Management, Lavagnon Ika, has said that while Africa’s infrastructure funding gap continues to dominate policy discussions, the more pressing challenge is the execution gap, the ability to translate available capital into completed projects.
Ika noted that this gap in project delivery is increasingly determining the continent’s development outcomes.
A statement by the Managing Director, Project Management Institute, Sub-Saharan Africa, George Asamani, said that across the continent, governments are becoming increasingly sophisticated at raising capital.
He noted that investment conferences are attracting global attention, new financing vehicles are emerging and ambitious infrastructure programmes are being announced with growing frequency. While this progress reflects growing ambition across the continent, it should not obscure the scale of Africa’s remaining infrastructure gap.
The African Development Bank estimates the continent’s infrastructure financing needs at approximately US$400 billion per year. The challenge is no longer solely about raising capital but also about ensuring that investment commitments translate into well-prepared, execution-ready and bankable projects.
Recent data illustrates this disconnect clearly. South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised economy, has secured over $91 billion (R1.5 trillion) in investment pledges through the South African Investment Conferences since 2018. However, only $38.6 billion (R634 billion), just under 42 percent, had flowed into the economy by March 2026. While investment announcements rarely translate fully into projects, South Africa’s conversion rates remain below global norms, highlighting persistent delivery challenges. McKinsey estimates that 60 to 80 percent of announced FDI is typically realised worldwide.
This reveals a critical constraint, a limited pipeline of bankable projects. Many infrastructure projects struggle not because financing is unavailable, but because they fail to progress through the complex preparation and development processes required to attract investment and move toward implementation.
As Tidjane Thiam, the former Swiss Credit CEO, recently argued, global investors are actively seeking greater exposure to Africa, drawn by its long-term growth potential. The real bottleneck lies in connecting that capital with bankable opportunities through stronger project preparation, advisory support and financial intermediation.
