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Aluko, Boateng launch $500m African development fund

By on October 4, 2013

Nigerian oil magnate, Kola Aluko, and Ghanaian-born British fashion designer, Ozwald Boateng, have launched the Africa50, a $500m African infrastructure project development fund.

Oscar-winning actor and musician, Jamie Foxx, joined the two African businessmen to officially launch the fund on Wednesday at the NASDAQ in New York, where they rang the opening bell, according to a report byForbes.

Africa50, a $500m pan-African infrastructure fund, is a joint venture between the African Development Bank and the Made In Africa Foundation, a United Kingdom non-profit organisation founded by Aluko and Boateng to facilitate development on the continent by funding large-ticket infrastructure projects across sub-Saharan Africa.

So far, Africa50 has raised about $250m, with Aluko and the AfDB committing $50m each to the fund.

Together with the AfDB, the MIAF plans to attract investments from development finance institutions, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and governments to the fund.

Capri Global Capital, a US-based investment advisory founded by African-American fund manager, Quintin E. Primo III, will work with the AfDB and MIAF in raising the additional capital.

The alliance between MIAF and AfDB aims to raise $500m for Africa50’s project development arm by the first half of 2014. The money will be used to fund feasibility studies of large-scale infrastructure projects.

The Foundation is also planning to raise a $10bn project finance fund.

Aluko, a successful oilman, had said in the past that the solution to Africa’s problems was not charity in terms of building schools or hospitals, which sometimes are not sustainable.

“These projects happen and then they are left in incapable hands and they are not commercially driven. As a consequence, most of them will go on for as long as the money has been given lasts and beyond that they slowly dilapidate and slowly die,” he said in an online broadcast.

 

 

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