The World Bank’s private investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is significantly expanding its local-currency lending across Africa.
This strategic move aims to solve a critical bottleneck: helping promising projects grow large enough to attract major global asset managers, such as BlackRock, which typically avoid investing in assets less than $1 billion. With concessional finance shrinking and aid from wealthy nations declining, local-currency lending can also protect African countries from exchange-rate volatility.
This approach, which already makes up 30% of the IFC’s portfolio, is part of a broader push to mobilize private capital.
The IFC is further deepening its commitment by partnering with commercial banks and advocating for more integrated financial markets to unlock local savings and secure long-term, transformative investment.
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The financing is designed to cushion energy costs while supporting Botswana’s private-sector and jobs reforms.