Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Banking will host the second edition of its African Markets Conference from 22 to 24 February 2026 in Cape Town, South Africa, bringing together global institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, and African policymakers to catalyse capital flow into the continent’s critical sectors.
Luvuyo Masinda, Chief Executive of Corporate and Investment Banking at Standard Bank Group, said the 2026 conference builds on the success of the inaugural 2025 event, which reframed Africa’s narrative from risk to resilience. He explained that this year’s engagement bridges the gap between policy ambitions and market realities, emphasizing that Africa urgently needs practical measures to deepen capital pools, improve market liquidity, and strengthen regulatory frameworks that give investors confidence to deploy capital at scale.
By 2050, Africa will add one billion people, more than half in cities, yet it invests only $75 billion of the $150 billion it needs annually for infrastructure. Africa’s current annual infrastructure investment stands at around $80 to $90 billion, according to the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA). Standard Bank aims to use the conference to ensure that African priorities remain at the centre of the global financial discourse.
The conference will be structured around five high-impact pillars designed to move the needle on investment. These include prioritising infrastructure as an asset class by moving beyond aid toward public-private partnerships (PPPs) that turn critical projects into investable assets for the private sector, and accelerating the energy transition by positioning Africa as a cornerstone of global energy security through unlocking its renewable potential.
Additional pillars focus on deepening African capital markets and mobilising private capital by enhancing domestic liquidity, improving regulatory transparency, and expanding access for institutional investors. The conference will also examine enabling intra-African trade and flows of capital by highlighting the importance of deeper regional integration for Africa to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the current uncertain global investment climate. Leveraging the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) for a larger, more predictable market that encourages intra-African investment forms a central theme.
The fifth pillar addresses Africa’s sovereign debt and cost sustainability, reframing the discussion from access to affordability, credibility and structure, with related perceived risk premium and the development of capital markets.
The conference is positioned as a high-level platform for engagement, with the emphasis expected to be less on individual deal-making and more on strengthening the financial architecture required to support sustained and scalable investment flows over time. Confirmed participants include finance ministers, ministers in infrastructure development and central bank governors from key African growth hubs, global asset managers and institutional investors seeking yield and sustainable impact, and development finance institutions (DFIs) and multilateral agencies focused on de-risking frameworks.
Standard Bank executives, including Sim Tshabalala, Chief Executive Officer of Standard Bank Group, Luvuyo Masinda, Sola Adegbesan, Head of Global Markets Africa Regions, and Alex Davidson, Head of Global Markets South Africa, will lead technical sessions on market liquidity.
The inaugural 2025 conference, held in Cape Town in March 2025, aimed to provide a platform for attracting new capital flows and uniting global and African sources of capital and risk appetite. The World Bank estimates that the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement, established in 2018 and ratified across 48 countries, can potentially increase the continent’s income by $450 billion in just over a decade and increase intra-African exports by more than 81 percent.
The 2026 African Markets Conference represents a collective call to action for the public and private sectors. Masinda said mobilising capital is not just about funding projects but about building the foundation of a more balanced and inclusive global economy.
