The African Development Bank became the first multilateral development institution accepted as a Berne Union member, gaining direct access to an industry that deployed approximately 140 billion dollars in insurance capacity for emerging markets in 2024 as part of efforts to mobilize private capital for African infrastructure projects. The announcement came during the fourth annual Insurer and Export Credit Agency Day held November 25 in Rabat, Morocco, ahead of the 2025 Africa Investment Forum Market Days.
Berne Union President Yuichiro Akita officially confirmed the membership during the session attended by more than fifty global insurers, brokers, export credit agencies and risk mitigation stakeholders. The Berne Union represents the leading global association for the export credit and investment insurance industry, with members providing around 2.5 trillion dollars of payment risk protection annually to banks, exporters and investors worldwide, equivalent to thirteen percent of world cross border trade for goods and services.
The membership is expected to facilitate structuring of guarantees, insurance backed lending and risk sharing tools designed to increase private financier confidence in African markets. African Development Bank officials indicated the step should make it easier to work with export credit agencies and insurers on project finance transactions across the continent, particularly for large infrastructure developments requiring complex risk mitigation arrangements.
The Insurer and Export Credit Agency Day represents a strategic platform to strengthen risk sharing and credit enhancement mechanisms for mobilizing private capital at scale for African development. African Development Bank Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer Hassatou Diop N’Sele told participants that many had previously asked the institution for earlier engagement and greater visibility into its processes and pipeline. The 2025 edition was designed to offer exactly that, she stated.
The Bank has executed guarantee transactions worth 2.3 billion dollars since 2014, helping mobilize approximately 5.2 billion dollars for projects in eight countries, according to Max Ndiaye, Senior Director for Syndication and Client Solutions at the Africa Investment Forum. The institution is leaning heavily on guarantees to attract private money as African governments face fiscal pressures that limit traditional sovereign lending capacity.
Chief Economist Dr Kevin Chika Urama emphasized Africa’s economic outlook remains solid despite global headwinds. Sectors including agritech and agribusiness are on track to reach a combined value of one trillion dollars by 2030, he noted. Renewable energy markets could be even larger, potentially hitting 1.3 trillion dollars, thanks partly to the continent holding nearly half of the world’s renewable energy potential. However, translating those opportunities into investment requires more collaboration with insurers and credit guarantee providers.
Detailed technical sessions in Rabat explored how to better allocate risks between sovereign and private borrowers, the type of information insurers need before underwriting, and how export credit agencies can be brought into projects at earlier stages. The Bank’s Risk Office pushed back against what it described as outdated assumptions about Africa’s risk profile, pointing to data from the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database showing that Africa posts the best recovery rates on defaults globally.
To give participants a sense of upcoming opportunities, the African Development Bank unveiled its 2026 pipeline comprising more than twenty billion dollars worth of projects. These include the twelve billion dollar Bishoftu International Airport in Ethiopia and Angola’s Unicargas logistics project, both of which have the Bank as lead arranger. The pipeline demonstrates the scale of infrastructure financing needs across the continent and the potential business opportunities for insurers and export credit agencies willing to engage.
The Africa Investment Forum Market Days wrapped up November 29 with 15.3 billion dollars in investment interest covering 39 bankable projects, underscoring growing global appetite for African opportunities. African Development Bank Group President Sidi Ould Tah announced the outcome at the close of the three day event held at Sofitel Jardin des Roses in Rabat under the theme Bridging the Gap: Mobilising Private Capital to Unlock Africa’s Full Potential.
Under President Ould Tah’s leadership, the Bank has articulated Four Cardinal Points aimed at strengthening Africa’s long term competitiveness: massively mobilizing capital, reforming Africa’s financial architecture, transforming demographic growth into economic power, and building resilient infrastructure while expanding local value addition. The strategy reflects recognition that public financing alone cannot meet the continent’s development needs and private sector participation is essential.
Senior Vice President Marie Laure Akin Olugbade said the Insurer and Export Credit Agency Day has become central to the Bank’s strategy under the incoming administration. With African governments facing fiscal pressures, she stated the continent’s development push increasingly depends on how successfully institutions like the African Development Bank can mobilize private finance through partnerships with risk mitigation providers.
The 2025 Africa Investment Forum drew financial backing from thirty two global private sector organizations, double the number in 2024, highlighting the Forum’s rising profile as a premier marketplace for investment in Africa. Over three days, more than two thousand delegates representing private capital providers, international investment and commercial banks, multilateral development finance institutions, entrepreneurs and government representatives explored project structuring, mobilizing capital and women’s access to finance.
About two thirds of the proposed transactions presented during Market Days targeted the energy and transport sectors. President Ould Tah said investors responded strongly to the projects tabled in the Forum’s boardrooms because they were supported by social and environmental impact studies and robust financial models. The Bank’s president unveiled new measures to track how commitments convert into real projects through an annual dashboard to monitor progress.
Created in 2018, the Africa Investment Forum is a multi stakeholder and multidisciplinary platform that connects investors and project developers. It provides a framework for supporting projects until they reach bankability and accelerates the financial closure of transactions. The Forum’s founding partners include the African Development Bank Group, Africa Finance Corporation, Afreximbank, Africa50, Development Bank of Southern Africa, Trade and Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, European Investment Bank and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa.
The event drew participants from nearly eighty countries including Japan which sent almost one hundred delegates and served as a major sponsor alongside the African Guarantee Fund, Algest Investment Fund, Ashurst LLP, the European Investment Bank and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector. Morocco’s Economy and Finance Minister Nadia Fettah emphasized that achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires four trillion dollars annually worldwide, with Africa needing nearly 1.3 trillion dollars each year.
