By Shruti Menon Seeboo
The 7th Annual Africa Pension Funds and Retirement Summit opened at the InterContinental Hotel & Resort in Balaclava Fort, Mauritius, establishing itself not as a mere talk shop, but as a critical strategic arena for overcoming the structural challenges facing the continent’s retirement sector. With the bedrock of the industry resting on navigating risks and ensuring the long-term stability and security of pension assets, the initial deliberations underscored that diversifying investment portfolios and improving regulatory frameworks are essential to sustaining growth momentum. The opening address delivered by H.E. Dr. Hlamalani Nelly Manzini, High Commissioner of the Republic of South Africa to Mauritius, set a profound tone for the gathering, noting that the summit was “born out of Africa’s quest for unity of its people in thought and in deed” and possessed the distinct “potential to revolutionize the pension fund investment posture in a way that would contribute significantly to African development.”
Dr. Manzini challenged delegates to confront the sharp contradictions currently existing across the continent, reminding the audience of Africa’s vast, unmatched potential, from holding 65% of the world’s arable land to possessing the capacity to power the globe with clean solar energy through the Sahara. Despite these immense natural and mineral endowments, she observed that “Africa remains the poorest continent that survives on foreign aid, and its countries are drowning in foreign debt.” In a stirring call to action, she reminded the financial leaders in attendance that the responsibility for transformation rests squarely on African shoulders. “Fellow participants, as you deliberate on the various topics of good sovereignty, remain alive to the fact that Africa is our continent,” Dr. Manzini stated. “Its challenges are our challenges. No one will find solution to our African problems except us as Africans.”
This sense of ownership directly translates to the strategic deployment of retirement capital. Dr. Manzini highlighted that African pension funds are managing a monumental portfolio of over 700 billion U.S. dollars, a figure projected to reach an impressive 7 trillion U.S. dollars by 2040. While she commended the increasing trend of investing in cross-border infrastructure, she urged fund managers to ensure their investment ecosystems remain agile enough to target specific projects destined to fuel the continent’s infrastructure trajectory. Capital deployment, she argued, must be viewed through both an economic and ethical lens, framing the investment in development-related projects as “a moral obligation to fulfill in such a way that we can look back at it with pride.” Turning to the broader regulatory landscape, she also pressed professionals to actively influence lawmakers as several countries embark on regulatory reforms. Leaving the summit with a powerful forward-looking sentiment, Dr. Manzini invoked a poignant reflection on the continent’s modern momentum, concluding that “Africa is no longer a promise. It is a system taking place.”
Building on this vision of continental self-reliance, George Aoko, Flagship Projects & PIDA Coordinator at the African Union, delivered a powerful keynote address on behalf of Her Excellency Lerato Dorothy Mataboge, the new African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy. Addressing delegates from the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Aoko reframed the continental narrative by posing a defining question central to Africa’s economic sovereignty: “How do we enable Africa capital to finance Africa development?” This inquiry comes at a decisive moment as external aid continues to contract, putting immense pressure on public investment just as global institutions are showing a deeper interest in Africa’s industrial growth. Aoko emphasized that while Africa possesses the youngest population in the world, the fastest GDP growth, and the historic opportunity of the African Continental Free Trade Area, it faces a severe infrastructure finance deficit, requiring about 130 to 170 billion U.S. dollars annually and leaving an annual gap of 60 to 100 billion U.S. dollars.
This deficit, Aoko warned, is not merely an engineering problem but a fundamental competitive challenge, because without modern corridors, interconnected energy systems, and digital networks, intra-African trade will remain constrained and regional value chains will struggle to emerge. To resolve this, he insisted that the global narrative must change. “The good news is that Africa is not capital poor,” Aoko declared, pointing out that institutional investors across the continent collectively manage nearly 4.4 trillion U.S. dollars in assets, with pension and industrial assets alone estimated between 1.1 and 2 trillion U.S. dollars. “This means that the issue before us is not the absence of capital or capital mobilization, but capital deployment,” he explained. “The issue is how to unlock, structure, align, and erase the capital for productive long-term investment into transformative infrastructure projects.”
The synergy between pension funds and infrastructure is natural, given that both liabilities and assets are long-term, predictable, and inflation-linked. Yet, actual participation remains nominal due to structural barriers like limited pipelines of bankable projects, regulatory risks, and currency volatility. Recognizing that pension managers are custodians of workers’ retirement savings, Aoko affirmed that “our objective is not to encourage reckless investment into infrastructure space because infrastructure is very capital intensive by nature. The objective is to create pension-grade infrastructure opportunities for us all in this house.” To achieve this, the African Union is advocating for five strategic shifts: strengthening project preparation and bankability through the PIDA Priority Action Plan 2, de-risking projects, deepening African capital markets, modernizing pension participation frameworks, and enhancing policy coordination between infrastructure planning and financial sector reforms.
Aoko drew particular attention to the urgent need for modernization, noting the stark reality that only about 20% of elderly Africans receive a pension compared to a global average of 77%, compounded by an average joining age in the mid-30s. With 80% to 90% of the workforce operating in the informal economy, he called for accelerated innovation in micro-pensions, mobile money systems, and inclusive digital financial platforms capable of mobilizing long-term savings from informal workers, youth, and women entrepreneurs, stating that “financial inclusion must be invested in inclusion.”
To unlock the necessary domestic capital, Aoko highlighted key African Union initiatives, including the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa and the Continental Business Network’s 5% Agenda, which calls on institutional investors to allocate at least 5% of assets under management toward African infrastructure. While 5% may appear modest, Aoko argued its impact will be transformative by unlocking billions for roads, railways, and fiber networks, while reducing dependence on expensive foreign-denominated debt. Backed by the mandate of the Luanda Infrastructure Financing Summit to explore regulatory reforms, and citing active infrastructure investment case studies in South Africa, Mauritius, Zambia, and Kenya, Aoko concluded with a stirring call for collective action. “Let us commit to finance Africa’s future with Africa’s own resources,” he urged. “Together, we can build an integrated Africa. Together we can finance Africa’s future. Together we can transform Africa’s savings into Africa’s prosperity.”
