Special Supplement: Africa - Emerging Asset Class - A Decade After Big Developers Pulled Back, Sub-Saharan Africa Is Re-emerging As A Market For Infrastructure Finance, With Innovations In International And Local Markets, Write Jon Marks And Kevin Godier.

Banker, The, December, 2007 by Godier, Kevin; Marks, Jon

Byline: JON MARKS AND KEVIN GODIER

Nothing concentrates the mind like competition, except perhaps for a dramatic change of circumstance. Both trends are apparent in the long, largely dormant, sub-Saharan African project finance market. Here, the emergence of China offering huge infrastructure-for-resources deals with countries such as Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and a continent-wide upturn in economic performance, have led banks to refocus on the region's potentials for creating big projects.

There are echoes of the late 1990s, when the Azito and Jorf Lasfar independent power projects (IPPs) in Cote d'Ivoire and Morocco laid down a financing model, by drawing in funding and guarantees from the World Bank and other major multilateral...

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