There is a distinct smell of diesel and sea salt that seems to hang over the coastal regions involved in the Lapsset project, a kind of promise of heavy industry that’s been lingering for years now. Nairobi-based Afri Fund Capital is stepping up with a massive plan—a $6 billion raise—to finally get some movement on the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport corridor. That is roughly 780 billion Kenyan Shillings, a number so large it’s almost hard to picture sitting in a bank account. Or maybe it’s just the scale of the infrastructure that’s hard to visualize.
They aren’t just winging it, though. The firm signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Capital Markets Authority back on March 9. It’s an interesting pivot, really. They are trying to bypass the usual heavy reliance on government borrowing by setting up a regulatory framework that actually welcomes private cash. It’s supposed to be a shift toward private-sector-led financing, which sounds professional enough, though you have to wonder how the transition will play out on the ground—or if it will even work as smoothly as they hope.
To hit that $6 billion target, Afri Fund Capital is looking well past the local borders. They’re eyeing the big leagues: the Nairobi Securities Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, and even the NYSE. A cross-listing strategy, they call it.
It’s a bold move to bridge the funding gap for what most people consider the key to unlocking the Horn of Africa’s potential. But these things are notoriously complex. You sign an MoU, you talk about global exchanges, and then there’s the actual work of moving concrete and steel. Whether the global markets will bite on this particular regional project is anyone’s guess, actually. Some investors get twitchy about these mega-projects.
Still, the goal is clear. They want the Lapsset corridor finished, and they’ve decided that private debt is the way to do it. It’s a gamble, maybe a necessary one, to keep the dream of this transport corridor alive. We will see, but for now, the paper is signed and the target is set in ink.
What happens next? It’s hard to say, but the team at Misryoum will be watching to see if this actually secures the billions or just becomes another ambitious slide deck in a conference room somewhere in the city.
