Africa needs investors willing to go first

The World Bank has once again put Africa’s infrastructure challenge in the spotlight through its ambition to help give 300 million people on the continent access to electricity by 2030.

For us as South Africans, the energy conversation is all too familiar. We have seen firsthand how our country, despite its advanced electrification programme, has faced the challenges of intermittent electricity supply.

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Across much of the continent, however, the challenge is even more fundamental. Nearly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still have no access to electricity at all.

For me, this goes beyond the ability to transform darkness to light with just the flick of a switch.

It means limited access to adequate health facilities, unreliable water supply, stifled agricultural yields and, perhaps most importantly, the inability to sustain meaningful employment.

The last point is especially alarming, considering that Africa has the youngest population in the world, with 70% of sub-Saharan Africa under the age of 30, according to the United Nations.

The World Bank initiative is encouraging and could help unlock meaningful progress.

However, in real terms, effective infrastructure development – whether in energy production, subsea fibre-optic broadband cable systems or water infrastructure, especially in places where investor appetite and development are lagging – goes far beyond funding facilities.

Why this matters beyond the infrastructure industry

Africa doesn’t have an infrastructure problem simply because we don’t know what needs to be built. We do know. The real question is whether enough people are prepared to invest behind those ideas before success is guaranteed.

After spending much of my career investing in infrastructure development across the continent, I’ve come to believe that the greatest shortage isn’t opportunity. It’s about people willing to go first.

I like to think of the earliest investors in African infrastructure as pathfinders. They’re prepared to move before the market reaches a comfortable consensus and before everyone else can see the opportunity.

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Read: Pan-African infrastructure fund eyes final close at $400m

Africa’s infrastructure deficit is not a problem to manage; rather it is an opportunity to deploy long-term patient capital towards infrastructure development for the benefit of unlocking our wealth and potential.

Pivotal moment

When I started Harith General Partners, one of our earliest meetings was with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Washington.

We walked into that meeting convinced there was a compelling case for a billion-dollar African infrastructure fund.

We walked out having been told there simply wasn’t enough deal flow on the continent to justify a fund of that size.

I’ll admit it shook my confidence.

For a moment, I wondered whether we had misread the opportunity. But that meeting also changed the way I thought about investing in Africa.

It became clear to me that Africa’s investment story would only change when Africans started investing in their own future first.

If we wanted global investors to believe in the continent, African institutions had to demonstrate that belief themselves.

We stopped trying to convince everyone. Instead, we focused on finding what I now call a community of believers, people prepared to back Africa before it became fashionable to do so.

That lesson extends far beyond infrastructure

Every transformative business begins with someone willing to move before the outcome is obvious.

Think of Discovery, whose Vitality model transformed the health insurance industry long before wellness incentives became mainstream.

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Think of Dangote’s refinery, years in the making, positioned to seize opportunities amid global energy disruptions.

Waiting for certainty usually means arriving too late.

None of that happens because one institution writes a cheque. It happens because partnerships work.

Financial models matter, but when projects encounter unexpected challenges, the quality of the partnership usually determines whether they succeed.

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate that infrastructure is ultimately a long-term partnership business. Projects often outlast political cycles, economic booms and even the people who first conceived them.

That means choosing partners who share the same long-term outlook and who remain committed when circumstances change.

Infrastructure is measured in decades, not quarters, and the relationships behind those investments need to be built with the same horizon in mind.

That is also why I believe bringing different pools of capital together is so important. No single institution can meet Africa’s infrastructure needs on its own. But when investors with different mandates and strengths work together, they can finance projects that would be difficult for any one organisation to undertake alone.

In many ways, building partnerships is just as important as building infrastructure itself.

Stand-out investment

One investment that has stayed with me over the years is the subsea fibre-optic broadband cable system connecting Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal to Europe through Portugal.

It is the kind of project that many investors would have dismissed as too ambitious or too complex. Yet it illustrates why infrastructure investing requires patience and partners who are prepared to think beyond immediate returns.

What fascinates me isn’t its size, but how infrastructure quietly becomes part of everyday life. People rarely think about the systems that allow businesses to operate or communities to connect. They simply expect them to work.

The greatest return on that investment wasn’t the cable itself. It was the opportunities that followed.

Better connectivity enabled businesses to reach new markets and gave more people the opportunity to participate in an increasingly connected economy. That’s when you realise infrastructure is never really about the asset itself. It’s about what the asset makes possible.

Africa’s next development agenda will require us to think differently about infrastructure.

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The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) presents one of the continent’s greatest economic opportunities. But trade agreements alone do not move goods, connect businesses or unlock growth.

Infrastructure is what turns policy into economic activity

For too long we’ve looked at energy, transport, aviation, ports and digital infrastructure as separate sectors. They are not. They are part of the same economic system.

Reliable electricity creates greater value when manufacturers can move goods efficiently. Better logistics strengthen trade. Aviation connects markets and people. Digital infrastructure allows businesses to compete beyond their borders.

The next opportunity for Africa isn’t simply to build more infrastructure. It is to build infrastructure that works together. That is how we create more competitive economies.

It is how we create jobs. It is how we give the continent’s young population a genuine opportunity to participate in economic growth.

Africa is urbanising faster than almost any other region. Its cities will continue to expand, its economies will continue to evolve, and demand for infrastructure will only increase. Infrastructure matters because it creates the conditions for businesses to invest, grow and create jobs.

If we get that right, we give the next generation a genuine opportunity to participate in Africa’s economic future.

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When we started this journey, there was one thing we never worried about. We knew there would be enough infrastructure to build for the next hundred years.

I still believe that today. Africa has never lacked ambition. The challenge has always been converting ambition into investment that endures and fully unlocks our potential as a region.

Tshepo Mahloele is founder and executive chair of Harith General Partners. The views expressed are his own.

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