Private Sector Development
Creating the conditions for private capital, and the capacity to sustain it
Private investment rarely fails for lack of capital. It fails because the conditions around it are not ready: the policy is unclear, the institutions are weak, or the companies that should absorb the capital are not yet able to. Private sector development is how we address that, at two levels. At the market level, we help governments and DFIs build the enabling environment that lets private capital flow to the right opportunities. At the company level, we build the capacity of local enterprises, SMEs, and clusters that sit underneath a major investment or advisory programme.
For us, private sector development is the upstream of bankability. It is how a pipeline gets created where there was none, and how a programme actually lands, through technical assistance, capacity building, and the patient institutional work that turns intent into investment. We do not do development programming for its own sake: every engagement is judged by whether it moves a market, a cluster, or a company closer to investable and thriving.
This theme runs through both of our practices, and our team has done the work from both sides of the table, inside the institutions that fund it and alongside the sponsors and company builders who deliver it.
How we work
We diagnose where the binding constraint actually sits, policy, institutions, or capability, and we work it directly rather than around it. At the market level, that means investment-climate reform, public-private partnership frameworks, and investment promotion. At the programme level, it means structured technical assistance and capacity building for local businesses, SMEs and clusters linked to initiatives in agriculture, mining, financial services, and infrastructure services.
- Public-private partnerships
- Investment promotion
- SME and cluster technical assistance
- Training & capacity building
- Startups and entrepreneurship hubs
Building the conditions for private capital
Private investment needs more than a deal, it needs the foundations: the policy, the institutions, and the capacity that let capital arrive and stay.
What is shaping Private Sector Development
Foreign investment into Africa hit a record in 2024, but project numbers tell a harder story
Foreign direct investment into Africa rose 75% to a record $97 billion in 2024, lifting the continent's share of global FDI to 6%; excluding one outsized Egyptian project, inflows still grew 12%, supported by investment facilitation and regulatory reform. Yet greenfield project value fell 37% and announcement numbers declined, signalling that headline capital is concentrating rather than broadening.
Governments and promotion agencies cannot rely on aggregate inflows to signal a healthy investment climate. The premium is now on facilitation reform and credible sector pipelines that convert investor interest into actual projects, particularly outside the handful of markets that capture most of the value.
PPP framework reform measurably moves infrastructure investment
Economies that made major changes to their public-private partnership regulatory frameworks saw infrastructure investment rise by an average of $488 million; of 140 economies assessed, 45 strengthened their PPP frameworks between 2019 and 2022, though Africa's reform progress remains gradual and financially closed PPPs stay concentrated in a few markets such as Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa.
For sponsors and investors, the quality of a country's PPP framework is a leading indicator of bankability. Reform is not a compliance exercise; it directly expands the addressable pipeline, and the markets that institutionalise credible frameworks will capture a disproportionate share of private infrastructure capital.
Africa is now the centre of gravity for blended finance, but mobilisation lags its promise
Africa accounted for roughly 40% of global blended finance transactions in 2024, yet blended finance has not scaled as hoped, remaining fragmented and bespoke and mobilising relatively limited commercial capital against an SDG financing gap in which Africa represents about 30% of the global shortfall.
Crowding in private capital depends less on more concessional money and more on the enabling conditions, replicable structures, local capital market depth, and institutional capacity, that let blended vehicles move beyond one-off deals. Sponsors and DFIs that invest in that enabling layer will convert scarce concessional resources into durable private flows.
Around a flagship food and agriculture programme, we co-led the private-sector integration strategy, anchoring the investment case around the infrastructure developers, private funds, food processors, agribusinesses, aggregators, and off-takers that turn a value chain into something capital can back. On a separate multi-country programme, we then built the capacity of small and growing businesses across six countries, mapping each to the value chains that mattered most, in agriculture, mining, oil and gas, and manufacturing.
Further upstream, where the entrepreneurial base itself was thin, we developed, engaged, and financed innovation hubs, incubators, and accelerators, strengthening the wider startup ecosystem inside a regional digital-economy programme in Central Africa.
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