The Definitive Guide to
Africa's Infrastructure

Generation, transmission, access and the transition trade. Africa holds roughly 60% of the world's best solar resource and attracts around 3% of global energy investment. The binding constraint has moved decisively from generation to transmission, distribution and offtaker creditworthiness. Utility balance sheets — not project economics — determine whether a pipeline converts.

Ports, rail, roads, aviation and the corridor economy. Corridors, not countries, are the real unit of analysis. Lobito, Northern, Central, Abidjan-Lagos and Maputo determine landed costs for half the continent's tradeable output. Transit-time data published by corridor authorities is excellent and almost never used.

Subsea cables, fibre, towers and data centres. The fastest-compounding asset class on the continent. 2Africa and Equiano transformed international bandwidth economics; the constraint has shifted inland to metro fibre, tower power and IX-adjacent compute capacity. AI demand is now a material driver of data-centre planning.

Supply, treatment, irrigation and transboundary basins. Chronically underfinanced relative to burden of disease and economic loss. Utility creditworthiness is weaker than in power, tariffs are more politically constrained, and there is no equivalent of the IPP model at scale — although desalination in North Africa is the closest thing.

Critical minerals, beneficiation and the infrastructure they demand. Copper, cobalt, lithium, bauxite, iron ore and rare earths are pulling rail, port and power capacity behind them. The policy fight is whether resource corridors carry general freight and power local industry, or function as single-purpose export conveyors.

Housing, mass transit, health and education assets. Africa will add roughly 900 million urban residents by 2050. Municipal balance sheets cannot carry that build. Sub-sovereign finance, land-value capture and municipal bond markets are the unglamorous instruments that decide whether cities function.