Africa’s most pressing infrastructure challenge is no longer raising capital — it is putting that capital to work. That is the central message of the Africa Finance Corporation’s State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2026 (SAIR 2026), launched in Nairobi on 23 April at the inaugural Africa We Build Summit, co-hosted by AFC and H.E. Dr William Samoei Ruto, President of the Republic of Kenya.
Now in its third edition, SAIR 2026 — titled The Africa We Build: From Capital to Systems — marks a deliberate evolution in how Africa’s infrastructure story is told. Where previous editions mapped investment gaps and catalogued asset classes, this year’s report reframes the continent’s development challenge around integrated systems: energy ecosystems, transport corridors, digital stacks, and industrial value chains that function together rather than in isolation.
Domestic Capital Has Overtaken External Flows
The report’s most striking finding is that Africa’s own capital has quietly surpassed what the rest of the world has sent in. Non-bank domestic capital pools — pensions, insurance assets, sovereign wealth funds, and development finance institutions — now exceed US2 trillion, compared to approximately US1.7 trillion in cumulative external flows to Africa between 2014 and 2024.
The reversal is being accelerated by global retreat. Official Development Assistance fell from US83.8 billion in 2020 to US73.5 billion in 2023, with further declines expected. Sovereign bond issuance has also contracted sharply, from over US29 billion in 2018 to just US4–6 billion annually in 2022–2023. Domestic pension and insurance assets crossed US$1 trillion for the first time — yet regulatory constraints and a lack of long-term instruments mean much of that capital remains underdeployed.
“Africa is not capital-poor; it is capital-trapped,” said Samaila Zubairu, President and CEO of AFC. “The opportunity now is to channel that capital into infrastructure and industry at scale — transforming resources into productivity, jobs, and long-term prosperity.”
Transport: From Corridors to Supply Chains
On transport and logistics, the report argues that the continent’s next leap does not require building entirely new networks — it requires making existing ones work as supply chains. The AFC Transport and Logistics Corridors Map shows that a core network of ports, railways, and road corridors already spans the continent. The bottleneck is operationalisation: one-stop border posts, functional corridor authorities, and multimodal integration remain underdeveloped.
Aviation receives particular attention. Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia are cited as models of what is achievable when air connectivity is embedded within a broader economic strategy — together contributing a combined US$5.5 billion to GDP and supporting roughly one million jobs. The report also flags a critical resilience gap: no African country meets the IEA’s 90-day emergency oil stock requirement, and food storage capacity covers less than 30% of annual production.
The energy challenge has moved beyond generation capacity. The new frontier is system integration — connecting generation, transmission, storage, fuels, and industrial demand into coherent ecosystems. Transmission is identified as the key constraint, and the report points to the first Independent Transmission Project to reach financial close in 2026 as proof the model works. Scaling it, the report argues, will require leveraging markets with strong Independent Power Producer track records, particularly in East and Southeastern Africa.
The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis is drawn on as a direct lesson: dependence on imported fuels is a structural vulnerability, making refining, storage, and fuel logistics infrastructure as economically critical as electricity systems.
Value Addition: Turning Resources Into Industry
Africa imports US$230 billion annually in basic products — fuel, food, plastics, steel, and fertiliser — much of it manufactured from the continent’s own raw materials. The report frames this not just as a vulnerability, but as an industrial opportunity. Using its Demand, Resources, Infrastructure and Policy framework, SAIR 2026 identifies downstream processing across steel, aluminium, fertiliser, and energy as among the highest-value opportunities available to the continent.
Digital: Solving the Missing Middle
International connectivity has largely been solved. The remaining constraint — and the largest investment opportunity — lies in what the report calls the “missing middle”: fibre backbones, cross-border links, Internet Exchange Points, and data centres. Ghana is held up as a benchmark, with digitally delivered services exports reaching 6.3% of GDP, on par with India. If Africa’s ten largest economies matched that level, regional digital services exports could grow from roughly US29 billion to US127 billion annually.
With ODA in structural decline and global supply chains fragmenting, the report’s message is clear: the window to deploy Africa’s own capital into the infrastructure it needs is open — but it will not stay open indefinitely. The State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2026 is available at africafc.org.