In a recent interview with Reuters, Oando’s Group Chief Executive, Wale Tinubu, set out more than a financing strategy, outlining a structural shift in how Africa must think about funding its future. As Oando advances plans to raise about $750m for an extensive drilling campaign that could significantly increase production, the conversation extends beyond capital availability to the changing nature of that capital and the implications for Africa’s long-term energy security.
Global dynamics are already reshaping the funding landscape, as heightened geopolitical tensions and supply disruptions redirect investor attention toward comparatively stable regions such as West Africa, while traditional sources of capital continue to retreat. European banks, once central to financing African hydrocarbons, have stepped back in response to evolving climate mandates and shifting risk priorities, creating a gap increasingly filled by alternative sources of funding, including Gulf institutions, private equity, trading houses, and African financial institutions. This diverse mix of capital presents opportunities, but it also reinforces a deeper structural reality that Africa remains heavily exposed to external financing cycles when developing its most critical resources.
Within this context, Tinubu’s position is both timely and instructive, highlighting the need for Africa to pool its own capital, including pension funds and other domestic sources, to support large-scale energy development. His remarks also recognise the important role already being played by African financial institutions such as Afreximbank and Africa Finance Corporation, which have helped demonstrate that African capital, when organised at scale, can support trade, infrastructure, and industrial development across the continent.
Afreximbank’s mandate is centred on financing and expanding intra- and extra-African trade, and its recent performance underscores the scale of what coordinated African finance can achieve. The bank disbursed US$18.7bn in 2024, its highest annual disbursement to date, while its wider trade development work has continued to support African economies through financing, trade facilitation, and industrialisation initiatives. Africa Finance Corporation offers a similar proof point in infrastructure, with an investment footprint across 36 African countries and more than US$17bn disbursed to projects across the continent.
These institutions matter because they show that Africa is not starting from zero. The continent already has platforms capable of mobilising and deploying capital into sectors that shape long-term growth. What is needed now is a deeper connection between these pan-African institutions, domestic institutional investors, pension funds, operators, and regulators, so that capital can flow with greater confidence into commercially viable projects that also serve strategic development priorities.
Over the past decade, African energy companies have raised substantial capital, much of it externally, to acquire and develop assets, enabling growth while simultaneously exposing the sector to external sentiment, policy shifts, and fluctuations in global capital flows. As global institutions continue to rebalance their portfolios, Africa faces an inflection point where the question is no longer simply how to attract foreign capital, but how to mobilise capital that already exists within its own financial systems.
The continent is not short of capital, as domestic pools of long-term funds, particularly pension assets, continue to grow steadily, yet remain concentrated in low-risk instruments with limited exposure to infrastructure and energy. AFC’s 2026 infrastructure report notes that pension and insurance assets in Africa have surpassed US$1tn for the first time, while public development bank assets and sovereign wealth funds also represent significant pools of domestic capital. This reflects a gap not of availability but of alignment, shaped by regulatory frameworks, risk perceptions, and the structure of investment opportunities available to institutional investors.
For pension funds, this cautious positioning is understandable given their primary mandate of capital preservation, particularly in sectors characterised by long timelines and layered risks. However, the cost of continued underinvestment in productive sectors such as energy and infrastructure is increasingly difficult to ignore, as it constrains industrial expansion, limits energy security, and reduces African economies’ ability to fully capture value from their natural resources.
The question, therefore, is not whether domestic capital should participate, but how to structure that participation in a way that meets institutional requirements while supporting long-term economic development. This will require a deliberate focus on improving project bankability, strengthening governance frameworks, and introducing risk mitigation mechanisms that enable domestic institutions to invest with confidence, alongside closer alignment between operators, regulators, and financial institutions to ensure that capital can move efficiently into commercially viable projects.
The energy sector sits at the centre of this shift, particularly as international oil companies continue to exit onshore positions, leaving indigenous operators to assume greater responsibility for production, infrastructure, and resource development.
Indigenous companies that have taken over assets previously held by IOCs, including Oando, Seplat, and Renaissance, reflect this broader inflection point. Their emergence marks meaningful progress in local ownership, but it also reinforces the need for that ownership to extend beyond operations to include financing, ensuring that the full economic value of these assets is retained within the continent.
However, financing African energy and infrastructure is only one part of the equation. Sustainable economic growth will remain limited if the continent does not also address the barriers that restrict trade between African markets.
Poor transport infrastructure, inefficient border processes, fragmented regulation, currency constraints, and limited regional value chains continue to weaken the flow of goods, services, and capital across the continent.
This is where agreements, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, become central to the argument; the AfCFTA was designed to accelerate intra-African trade and strengthen Africa’s position in global trade, while the World Bank has projected that full implementation could raise African income by nearly US$450bn by 2035 and increase intra-continental exports by 81 per cent. Afreximbank’s African Trade Report also noted that intra-African trade reached US$192bn in 2023, accounting for 15 per cent of total African trade, up from 13.6 per cent a year earlier.
The link between capital and trade is critical; if Africa mobilises its own capital but continues to trade primarily through fragmented markets, the impact will be limited. If, however, domestic capital is channelled into energy, infrastructure, logistics, manufacturing, and payment systems that enable African countries to trade more effectively with one another, the result is far more powerful. Capital begins to support production, production supports trade, and trade helps retain value within the continent.
“Africa must fund Africa” is therefore not a slogan, but a necessary evolution in how the continent approaches its development. Greater mobilisation of domestic capital would enable returns to circulate within African economies, deepen financial markets, and strengthen resilience against external shocks, while reducing dependence on global capital cycles that may not always align with regional priorities.
The next phase of Africa’s energy and industrial development will depend on whether the continent can connect its capital, assets, and markets with greater discipline and ambition. African institutions are already proving that pooled capital can be deployed at scale. Indigenous operators are proving that local companies can take on strategic assets and run them with long-term intent. AfCFTA offers the framework to turn national progress into continental value.
Africa has the capital, the assets, the market, but most importantly, it has its people, whose resilience and rapidly growing expertise continue to shape the continent’s economic trajectory. Capital without deployment is inert. Trade without traders is architecture without inhabitants. The pooled pension assets and blended finance structures that African institutions are mobilising require someone to build the factories, run the supply chains, and conduct the economic activity that turns financial flows into lived prosperity. The opportunity now lies in aligning all four through deliberate and forward-looking action that builds institutional strength, technical capacity, and the human capital required to sustain long-term growth. This means investing not just in projects but in skills and systems that ensure Africans are not only participants in the continent’s development but are the key drivers of it, with the ability to operate and scale the industries that will design Africa’s future.
Adegoke, an energy executive, writes from Lagos
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