Discover the agenda of the inaugural Structured Finance Africa Forum
Opening Ceremony
Plenary room Lat Dior
Overcoming the Financing Challenge: Public Ambitions, Budgetary Constraints, and Structured Levers
Plenary room Lat Dior
Africa faces a triple financing challenge: bridging an annual infrastructure gap of over USD 100 billion, strengthening its private productive sector, and sustainably refinancing its public debt. In this context, structured finance offers solutions to pool risks, extend maturities, and mobilize private capital at scale by combining multiple instruments such as securitization, public-private partnerships (PPPs), climate finance, and guaranteed trade finance. These hybrid financing models are increasingly being adopted by both private institutions (e.g., IFC, EIB, EAIF) and public actors, such as the Ivorian state, which has financed several infrastructure projects through structured PPPs with Proparco and Meridiam. Despite these successes, a major challenge remains: scaling these models to other countries and sectors while ensuring their financial sustainability and impact.
What types of structured financing can pragmatically and innovatively address the massive, multi-sector financing needs of our economies today?
Points of discussion:
● Multi-stakeholder structuring: How can public capital, DFI guarantees, institutional funds, and capital markets be combined to meet increasingly complex financing needs?
● Sustainability vs. leverage effect: What criteria can ensure effective structuring of borrowings without exacerbating the burden of public debt?
● Replicability and scaling up: What lessons can be drawn from successful experiences on the continent to standardize and disseminate best practices?
Panel 1 – Bigger, Further : How Can Securitisation in Africa Scale Up ?
Plenary room Lat Dior
Since the adoption of the regional regulatory framework in 2010, securitisation in West Africa has experienced a slow but steady rise. Despite notable progress—such as the first private issuances, the creation of dedicated management companies, and greater involvement of banks and leasing
firms—its potential remains largely untapped. For instance, the total outstanding amount of issuances in the WAEMU is still below 1% of regional GDP, far from the levels observed in South Africa or Morocco. Yet securitisation is a powerful tool to refinance loan portfolios, lighten balance sheets, channel institutional savings, and finance the real economy. While financial sector players are experimenting with innovative financing models—such as SOGESY and KF Titrisation structuring vehicles backed by leasing, tax receivables, and SME loans, or BOAD introducing new credit enhancement mechanisms to improve liquidity—securitisation and its latest innovations still struggle to attract investors. Ticket sizes remain limited, investor caution prevails, and the secondary market lacks depth.
How can securitisation become a genuine impact financing tool capable of accelerating regional economic transformation?
Points of discussion:
● Diversification of securitised assets: What technical and legal conditions are required to extend securitisation to non-traditional assets (invoices, tax receivables, microloans)?
● Attractive structuring for investors: How can liquidity and the ratings of securitisation funds be strengthened to attract insurers, banks, and pension funds?
● Towards sustainable and digital securitisation: How can ESG criteria, blockchain, and automated ratings be integrated to modernise the offering and broaden the investor base?
Strategic Roundtable - SMEs, Fintech, and Microfinance: Building the Architecture to Strengthen Access to Credit
Room Aline Sitoe Diatta
With more than 90% of African businesses classified as micro or small, access to credit remains one of the main barriers to inclusive growth. While traditional channels struggle to meet the needs of this segment, fintech companies and microfinance institutions have made notable breakthroughs by leveraging digitalisation, mobile money, and alternative scoring models. Countries like Kenya have demonstrated both the potential and the limits of these approaches: over 5 million microloans are distributed via digital platforms—often for amounts under USD 50—with repayment rates above 85%. However, the absence of harmonised regulation and a centralised credit registry has led to the proliferation of unlicensed actors, interest rates sometimes exceeding 180% annually, and a growing risk of over-indebtedness.
How can these local and fragmented innovations be transformed into structured, bankable, and regulated credit portfolios?
Points of discussion:
● Securitisation of microloan portfolios (ABS): What approaches can aggregate, standardise, and refinance portfolios from fintechs or MFIs while effectively managing risk?
● Alternative scoring and risk transparency: How can models based on digital transaction flows be strengthened, and shared databases developed, to limit the risk of cascading defaults?
● Scaling up: How can fintech and MFI models be transformed into bankable, regulated portfolios that attract institutional investors, within a framework that protects both borrowers and lenders?
Panel 3 – Sustainable Finance in Africa: Unlocking Untapped Potential to Accelerate Development.
Plenary room Lat Dior
As Africa faces growing needs to finance infrastructure, energy transition, and the expansion of its private sector, resources mobilized through sustainable finance—green bonds, ESG credit lines, blended finance—remain underused and often poorly targeted. Sustainable finance in Africa is still far from delivering on its full promise. More than 97% of sustainable bonds issued on the continent come from just three countries: Nigeria, Morocco, and South Africa. Meanwhile, so-
called “impact” projects often remain limited to bilateral pilots or isolated structures, hindered by a lack of bankable projects, adequate regulatory frameworks, and effective intermediation. Yet solutions are emerging. In 2024, the AfDB structured a USD 750 million sustainable hybrid bond, while actors such as FSD Africa, TDB, and EAIF are building innovative blended finance platforms. Kenya’s Lake Turkana wind project illustrates the effectiveness of structured financing that combines public and private debt with guarantees, while Nigeria has announced the issuance of NGN 300 billion (USD 200 million) in green bonds to support climate-resilient infrastructure.
However, the road ahead is still long, and expectations remain high. Why does sustainable finance still struggle to truly transform the continent’s development?
Points of discussion:
● Aligning impact requirements with on-the-ground feasibility: How can projects be designed to meet ESG standards while remaining executable in African contexts?
● Adapting instruments: What technical and regulatory adjustments are needed to make green bonds, climate guarantees, and blended finance truly operational?
● Intermediation and project hosting: How can impact investors be effectively connected with African project sponsors?
Panel 4 : Growth in Sight: How Can Innovative Financing Drive Priority Sectors?
Plenary room Lat Dior
In West Africa, four strategic sectors—agro-industry, energy, mining processing, and digital services—account for more than 65% of the region’s potential to create added value. Yet less than 20% of structured financing mobilized in the region between 2018 and 2023 has been directed to these sectors. The gaps are glaring: local processing rates remain below 15% in most WAEMU countries, less than 3% of renewable energy potential is exploited, and in mining processing, the share of local value captured from gold remains under 5%. Meanwhile, massive investments are still needed to unlock the region’s digital economy.
Some initiatives, however, show that strategic alignment between public capital, private investments, and multilateral financing can change the game—for example, Nigeria’s agro-industrialization program funded with USD 500 million by the African Development Bank, Africa50’s energy infrastructure fund, and regional digital innovation platforms supported by the IFC. Yet these examples remain isolated and insufficiently scalable.
Which levers should be activated to channel resources massively towards sectors that generate the most jobs, tax revenues, and local added value?
Points of discussion:
● Aligning priorities with pipelines: How can national and regional sectoral priorities be aligned with investment pipelines to maximize impact?
● Structuring partnerships: How can partnerships between states, investors, and operators be structured to secure flows and profitability?
● Scaling up platforms: How can regional sectoral investment platforms be scaled and replicated across multiple countries and sectors?
Closing Remarks
Plenary room Lat Dior
Multi-Originator Sovereign e-Sukuk in the WAEMU – An Innovative Proposal to Channel Diaspora Savings
Room Omar Tall
In a context of increasing pressure on public budgets and urgent financing needs for WAEMU member states, this Masterclass introduces an innovative framework to mobilize foreign currency resources at lower cost and off the public balance sheet. The objective is to design a financial solution that enables states to access funding backed by future VAT or customs duty flows, pooled at the regional level and primarily targeted at the diaspora.
How can WAEMU states channel foreign currency financing without worsening public debt ratios, while ensuring controlled costs and a structure attractive to investors?
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