Bank urges Africa to increase local funding for infrastructure projects

Dar es Salaam. Africa should scale up its existing financial institutions, deepen domestic capital markets and strengthen regional cooperation to meet its growing infrastructure financing needs, Stanbic Bank Tanzania has said.

Speaking during the Africa50 Annual General Shareholders Meeting and Africa Infrastructure Forum in Dar es Salaam, Stanbic Bank Tanzania Chief Executive Officer, Manzi Rwegasira, said the continent already had the institutions needed to finance development but lacked the scale required. “It boils down to scale.

We need to think about how we can scale up what we already have on this continent,” Mr Rwegasira said. He said institutions such as the African Development Bank and Africa50 could not finance Africa’s infrastructure needs alone, urging countries to make better use of domestic bond markets to mobilise long-term capital.

“We need to make better use of our national domestic bond markets. They’re still too shallow and too small. We need to make them bigger,” he said.

Mr Rwegasira also called for stronger regional cooperation to pool capital and support larger infrastructure projects, while encouraging the use of innovative financing models such as securitisation and infrastructure asset recycling.

He said such approaches could enable governments to use existing infrastructure assets to generate funding for new projects.

Stanbic Bank Tanzania Head of Corporate and Investment Banking Ester Manase said commercial banks, development finance institutions, insurers, governments and private investors must work together because infrastructure projects require long-term capital.

“The biggest takeaway for me is collaboration. Every stakeholder has an important role to play, but none of us can achieve these ambitions alone,” she said.

Ms Manase said Tanzania was well positioned to become an East African logistics hub, citing its strategic location.