The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) just dropped its latest State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report, and Nigeria is getting some recognition, not for spending, but for being smart with its money.
The 2025 report, titled “Mobilising Domestic Capital”, shines a light on how African countries can unlock trillions sitting in domestic capital, especially pension funds, to build the roads, bridges, power plants, and other infrastructure the continent desperately needs. And Nigeria, it turns out, is being held up as a case study for how to do this without forcing rigid rules.
Here’s what’s really going on: Africa has a combined $4 trillion in local capital, but most of it isn’t being used to fund development. That pool includes $1.1 trillion in institutional capital (mostly from pensions and insurance), $2.5 trillion in commercial bank assets, and around $470 billion in external reserves.
Nigeria’s pension funds alone are sitting on over N22.8 trillion (about $14.2 billion). A few years ago, only a tiny fraction of that, just N1.2 billion, was allocated to infrastructure. But by early 2025, that number jumped to over N242 billion, thanks to tools like InfraCredit that help reduce risk for long-term projects. It’s still just about 1% of total assets, but it’s a big step in the right direction.
The report admits the pace is slow, even in countries like South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria that have started aligning national savings with development goals. One of the biggest problems? Many African countries just don’t have the policies or financial tools in place to make infrastructure investment attractive to local funds.
AFC’s President and CEO, Samaila Zubairu, summed it up perfectly at the report’s launch: Africa has to take the lead in its own development. That means not just waiting for foreign investors to show up, but proving that the continent is a safe, credible place to put money.
Nigeria’s making progress and showing the rest of Africa how it’s done. There’s still a long way to go, but this kind of smart, market-based investing might be the key to closing Africa’s massive infrastructure gap.
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