Africa has over 4 trillion in untapped resources that, if effectively mobilised, could catalyse an era of infrastructure-led growth. This is according to the Africa Finance Corporation's State of Africa's Infrastructure Report 2025 , which was launched virtually on 5 June 2025. Drawing on the experience of Asia, the report calls for deeper financial markets, stronger public institutions and targeted policy reforms to channel longer-term savings into energy, transport and manufacturing and digital infrastructure for the continent.
Presenting the highlights of the report, Dr Rita Babihuga-Nsanze, AFC's chief economist and director of research and strategy, noted that this year's report rises to the challenge, set out in last year's edition, to identify and map domestic capital pools. "We didn't just estimate the numbers we set out to locate where these savings are held across the continent and how they're currently being allocated. It is the most exhaustive bottom-up effort to date," she said.
The report, she said, maps institutional capital by geography and asset class across 28 countries, covering 80 of Africa's GDP. "African markets are improving in data quality, transparency, and regulatory disclosures," she said, adding that "this report is an opportunity to back up the numbers that are quoted when talking about Africa's institutional savings."
According to the report, the continent has over 1.1 trillion in institutional capital, lodged in pension funds, insurance, sovereign wealth funds and public development banks. In addition, there is nearly 500bn in central bank reserves, and by a conservative estimate, another 200bn in household savings in Africa's vast informal economy. "Put together, these figures provide a fuller, more practical view of the capital Africa can mobilise for its transformation," Babihuga-Nsanze said, adding that the question that arises is how this capital can be directed into productive investments for the benefit of the continent.
Babihuga-Nsanze said that with allocations heavily concentrated in low-risk, short term assets such as government securities, money managers on the continent are crowding out the private sector while increasing their exposure to sovereign, which has been heightened by the fiscal constraints that governments are currently facing. This conservative approach contrasts sharply with in OECD countries, "where pension capital is channelled into the real economy via equities, corporate debt and infrastructure. In short, Africa's most strategic pool of long-term capital is in the OECD world in support of their long-term transformation."