Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has this month become the 30th member of the Master Cooperation Agreement (MCA) at the World Bank’s Annual Meetings in Washington DC.
Created by the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) in 2009, the MCA seeks to enhance cooperation among member development finance institutions (DFIs). Aside to AFC, other MCA signatories include the UK’s CDC Group, the Netherland’s FMO and Sweden’s Swedfund.
In addition to increased collaboration with other MCA signatories, AFC stands to benefit in several ways through this accession. This includes an increased deal flow and access to a robust pipeline of project opportunities, increased administrative efficiencies and deal processing, as well as AFC’s overall enhanced relationship with IFC itself.
Andrew Alli, President and Chief Executive Officer of AFC, commented “AFC has long believed in the efficacy of collaboration in accelerating infrastructure development. It is why we have done so on a number of occasions with sister organizations, including KFW, the German DFI, just last year to finance projects in our core sectors.
“In acceding to the MCA, we are demonstrating our commitment to establishing further collaboration with our peers that will ensure we close Africa’s infrastructure gap at an expedited rate.”
Jingdong Hua, Vice President and Treasurer of IFC, commented on the announcement: “The MCA was founded in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to facilitate large-scale infrastructure projects, and it has demonstrated significant capacity to deliver results for Africa.”
“We are therefore delighted to welcome AFC as a signatory to the MCA, and look forward to enhanced cooperation, both in terms of fundraising, as well as building a set of projects pipelines across AFC’s five sectors.”
The official signing ceremony took place on 13 October 2017, on the sidelines of the 2017 World Annual Meetings in Washington D.C., USA.
AFC is committed to proactively financing and managing the development of key infrastructure projects which will have a positive impact on the lives of Africans throughout the continent. To date the Corporation has invested approximately US$ 4 billion in projects across 28 countries and in a wide range of sectors including power, telecommunications, transport and logistics, natural resources and heavy industries.
