• JP Morgan's Eweck states liquidity exists, but a shortage of "bankable" projects hinders African investment, not risk appetite.
• Governments fund 80-85% of African infrastructure, while direct private sector participation remains low at only 5-10%.
• Investors rely on Eurobonds and MDB innovations like MIGA guarantees to channel funds, as direct project pipelines remain scarce.

According to JP Morgan, the continent’s funding gap is not a crisis of risk appetite or liquidity, but rather a shortage of "bankable" projects ready for global capital. Speaking on a high-level panel at the Africa Investment Forum in Rabat, Morocco, on November 27, Olivier Eweck, Managing Director and Head of Africa Public Sector at JPMorgan, discussed his view of the regional investment landscape. "From my standpoint, there is an appetite for risk for Africa. The liquidity is there. Technological innovation is there," he stated.

The comments came in a follow-up contribution to discussions regarding risk mitigation, specifically addressing points raised by Manuel Moses, CEO of the African Trade and Investment Development Insurance (ATIDI), regarding the role of insurance in de-risking markets. While acknowledging that risk exists, Eweck argued that the financial toolkit to manage it is already available.

"It's not so much a question of risk, because the risk, we can go to [insurance] to insure it, we will price it," Eweck explained. "But we want enough projects that can give us the risk-adjusted return that we are looking for." The bottleneck, he argued, lies in the preparation phase.

The Domination of Public Funding

Commercial banks and international investors require projects that have moved beyond concepts to become structurable financial assets. "An investment banker is not going to do the preparatory work," Eweck cautioned. "We want a project that is bankable and provides funding. And [there is] not enough."

To illustrate the structural imbalance, Eweck provided data showing how heavily African infrastructure relies on public funding compared to the rest of the world. While governments globally fund about 50 to 60 percent of infrastructure, with the private sector contributing 20 to 30 percent, the dynamic shifts drastically in Africa.

"In Africa, the government remains the major contributor... but the private sector dwindles to like 5 to 10 percent," Eweck noted. He pointed out that when aggregating direct government spending with long-term loans from Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), "we have a whopping 80 to 85 percent of infrastructure funded directly by the government."

Pathways for Private Capital

Despite the shortage of direct project pipelines, JP Morgan highlighted two major avenues where the private sector is successfully engaging: the Eurobond market and partnerships with Development Finance Institutions (DFIs).

Eweck noted that the Eurobond market remains the "deepest and the largest market" for African sovereigns, with over 11 countries issuing in the past 15 years. He emphasized that indirectly, international investors are already funding infrastructure through these bonds, provided governments abide by the prospectuses and use funds for "revenue-generating" projects rather than salaries.

Furthermore, innovation within MDBs is unlocking new opportunities. Eweck highlighted recent moves by the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).

"I heard today that MIGA can now cover single B-rated countries... This is a significant change that enables the private sector to contribute to the funding of infrastructure projects," Eweck said. He also cited the African Development Bank (AfDB) as a "trendsetter," particularly for its use of synthetic securitization to transfer risk from public balance sheets to the private sector. The bank's perspective carries weight. JP Morgan remains a dominant player in the region, having operated on the continent for over 100 years, with recent expansions into Côte d'Ivoire and Kenya.

Data from Cbonds indicates that in 2025, the US-based investment bank ranked second in African-originated international bond issuance, helping attract $3.6 billion for African issuers—$1.4 billion for sovereigns and the remainder for corporates. As the Africa Investment Forum concludes, the message to policymakers and developers is clear: Global capital is ready to deploy, but it requires a robust pipeline of structured, bankable projects to move from fragmented transactions to transformative economic growth.

Idriss Linge