• Ministers agreed that regulatory stability and legal clarity are essential to attract long-term private investment across Africa.

• They emphasized that regional infrastructure integration is key to expanding connectivity and enabling multi-country value chains.

• They stated that public-private partnerships and de-risking measures are now central to mobilizing private capital for development.

A high-level panel of African Ministers discusses “Accelerating Private Investment Through Conducive Enabling Environments”  at the opening ceremony of AFDB African Markets Days 2025 in Rabat, Morocco, signaling a collective shift in the continent’s development strategy. With concessional financing declining sharply, the ministers emphasized that mobilizing private capital is now a shared responsibility among African governments. Their discussions highlighted a coordinated approach centered on regulatory stability, regional infrastructure integration, and stronger public-private partnerships.

Regulatory Stability as the Cornerstone of Investor Confidence

The ministers agreed that establishing legal and macroeconomic certainty remains the essential foundation for attracting private investment at scale. This includes undertaking deep regulatory reforms and aligning national legal frameworks with international and regional standards. Ethiopia’s Minister of Finance, Ahmed Shide, underscored this priority, explaining that ongoing reforms are “geared towards ensuring that investors operating in Ethiopia can access the wider African market of 1.4 billion consumers seamlessly.” He added that the government is modernizing its frameworks “to ensure consistency with regional best practices… [allowing cross-border investors to operate under] cleaner, predictable, and more interoperable rules.”

Côte d’Ivoire’s Minister of Planning and Development, Kaba Nialé, pointed to tangible results stemming from legal clarity. “In 2018, we adopted a new Investment Code to provide better and bolder incentives to the private sector… Since then, private sector investment has gone from 12% to 20% in 2022,” she said. From Mauritania, Abdallah Souleymane Cheikh-Sidia echoed the same imperative: “We must ensure that there is legal stability. And this legal stability is for us… a core focus area. We have a new investment code… which integrates international best practices.”

Infrastructure as a Strategic Tool for Regional Integration

A second pillar of the ministers’ vision centered on treating major infrastructure projects as regional assets that can enable multi-country value chains. They stressed that Africa’s ability to attract large-scale investment depends heavily on connectivity, integration, and the creation of cross-border economic corridors. Minister Shide emphasized that “regional integration is at the heart of Ethiopia’s economic strategy, because scale, connectivity, and market access are central to attracting private investment,” adding that Ethiopia’s major programs in energy, transport, logistics, and aviation are being designed as “regional assets that anchor regional integration.”

Zambia’s Minister of Finance and National Planning, Situmbeko Musokotwane, highlighted how new regional links can reshape economic geography. He pointed to projects underway, such as the trans-continental railway, noting: “This is a railway that for the first time is going to connect the west coast of Africa in Angola to the east coast of Africa, to the port of Dar es Salaam.”

Public-Private Partnerships and De-Risking as the New Financing Model

The panel also underscored a decisive move away from aid-driven development toward private-sector-led financing, with public-private partnerships serving as the main delivery model. This approach, they stressed, must be supported by macroeconomic stability and government action to reduce investor risk. Reflecting on Zambia’s experience, Minister Musokotwane said: “I said to myself, how I wish we had started this sort of thing 40 years ago, instead of focusing on development based on donations to us, rather than us mobilizing money… We are going to use the private sector to develop the economy.” He noted that Zambia is already seeing substantial interest: “We have attracted more than $7 billion of new investments into the mining sector in the last two years.”

From Guinea, the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Ismael Nabé, highlighted the political determination required to execute large-scale partnerships. “A PPP project of $20 billion… became a reality because for more than 40 years, there was no governmental follow-up… The PPP is the way forward,” he said. He also pointed to recent macroeconomic improvements, assuring investors that “inflation has gone down from 7% to 2%… Guinea is ready.”

Across all interventions, the ministers expressed a unified commitment to making African economies more predictable, stable, and conducive to business growth. Their collective message was that Africa must move “beyond private sector challenges” by pairing political stability with transparent and consistent rules, thereby creating an environment where private investors are both welcomed and empowered. As one minister concluded, the priority now is to create conditions that allow the private sector to fully contribute to driving shared prosperity across the continent.

Idriss Linge