Africa Investment Facility (AfIF)

Start Year

2015

End Year

Ongoing

Description

The Africa Investment Facility (AfIF), set-up in 2015, is the newest of the EU’s regional blending facilities. The blending facilities are innovative financial instruments that use EU development grants to leverage additional funding from European and regional development financial institutions and the private sector. They help implement key infrastructure and private sector support projects that are critical to sustainable development in partner countries worldwide.

AfIF, which is funded mainly from different programmes under the European Development Fund (EDF), but also under the EU's Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI), provides various kinds of grant funding for development projects:

Investment grants, to finance specific project components (with, for example, social or environmental added-value) or a percentage of the total project cost (thereby reducing the amount of debt for the partner country).
Technical assistance, providing tailored support to meet specific project needs, both during project preparation and implementation. This assistance helps ensure the quality, efficiency and long-term sustainability of a project and may address aspects related to the project-enabling environment or other aspects that are key for a project’s successful implementation.
Risk sharing instruments, such as risk capital and guarantees, to allow the available funds to be used efficiently by reducing risks and unlocking additional financing.

Main Objectives

Contributing to poverty reduction, and sustainable and inclusive economic development in Africa through continental economic integration, with an emphasis on the improvement of economic infrastructures.

Main Activities

EU support will address projects with a continental dimension that can swiftly and efficiently deliver results in the transport, energy, water and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sectors.

Funds from this contribution to the AfIF may be used to perform the necessary studies to develop and finalise the most promising investment projects exploring both traditional and innovative financing mechanisms.