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Nigerian billionaire Tony Elumelu is helping assemble a pipeline of investment projects across West Africa that organizers expect to be worth $15 billion or more by the time a regional investment summit opens in Sierra Leone on Nov. 17-18.
Elumelu, chairman of Heirs Holdings, co-chairs the West Africa Integration and Investment Summit with Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio. The two met business leaders and financial institutions in Lagos earlier this month at the first in-person meeting of the summit’s private-sector advisory board, as preparations for the Freetown event gathered pace.
Kandeh Yumkella, the summit’s special envoy, said organizers received 170 submissions from more than 10 countries and selected 26 projects worth more than $10 billion. They cover energy, trade, industrialization, strategic minerals, agribusiness and digital services.
The figure is a pipeline, not money raised. The projects are being prepared for review by lenders and investors, and their inclusion does not mean the funds have been committed or disbursed. United Bank for Africa, Afreximbank, Africa Finance Corporation and Africa50 are among the institutions expected to assess them for financing.
The summit is meant to tackle a long-running problem in the region: plans that never become projects banks will fund. Organizers are working to identify financing gaps, line up investors and pin down the policy changes each project needs to move forward.
Bio has pitched the summit as a way to bring governments and investors together around a regional market of more than 400 million people. West African states have pursued integration through the Economic Community of West African States for decades, but differences in regulation, infrastructure and customs procedures still slow the movement of goods, services and money across borders.
Elumelu said the effort is about moving past talk of the region’s potential toward cooperation that produces businesses, jobs and investment. The initiative fits the approach he has promoted for years under the label Africapitalism, which holds that private enterprise should drive long-term economic and social development on the continent.
His own businesses span the region. Heirs Holdings has interests in energy, financial services and hospitality, and its energy arm recently raised his combined stake in Seplat Energy to 21%. He chaired UBA, which operates in markets across Africa and beyond, until he retired from the role in August.
The next step is to decide which proposals meet investors’ requirements, what financing structures they need and whether governments can provide the regulatory certainty to carry them through. Whether the pipeline reaches $15 billion, and how much of it becomes completed projects, will depend on how many proposals clear that process after the November meeting.
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