Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), Africa’s leading infrastructure solutions provider, has recorded an outstanding performance in its latest financial year, with total assets growing 23 per cent to $10.5 billion and the Corporation realising its five-year growth target a year early. Against a challenging global economic and geopolitical backdrop in FY’22, AFC increased profit by 36 per cent to $285.9 million, boosted operating income by 54 per cent to $400.4 million, and improved the liquidity coverage ratio to 202 per cent.
AFC President & CEO, Samaila Zubairu, said: ”To scale up our development impact across Africa, in 2018 we set out to more than double the Corporation’s total assets from $4.5 billion to $10 billion, improve our return on equity from seven.per cent to over 12 per cent, and broaden our investment footprint on the continent in terms of geography and sector concentration, all within a five-year period. I am pleased to report that we have met and, in some cases, exceeded our targets on all of these pillars, well ahead of our end-2023 target for achieving the strategy’s objectives.”
AFC’s pan-African reach expanded through investments in 36 countries, and accession to the Corporation by seven additional member states—Angola, Bo-tswana, Cameroon, Somalia, South Sudan, Tunisia, and Ethiopia—taking the total number of member states to 40, three-quarters of the continent. Four new sovereign shareholders, Egypt, Mauritius, Cote D’Ivoire and DRC, helped increase total equity by 21 per cent, to $2.67 billion from a total of 37 equity investors. AFC’s consistently strong performance has been achieved by investing in projects that blend meaningful development impact with high risk-adjusted returns, leveraging the Corporation’s talent and execution culture to achieve its mandate of building the infrastructure required to foster industrialization in Africa. Notable project investments in 2022 include AFC’s joint acquisition of Lekela Power, Africa’s largest renewables- focused independent power producer; codevelopment of the Nyanza Light Metals titanium dioxide plant in South Africa; scaling up the number of countries in ARISE IIP from three countries to several African countries; and participation in a €650 million financing for Société Africaine de Raffinage, the national refinery of Senegal.
In response to global supply chain vulnerability and other economic challenges created by COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine conflict AFC launched a $2 billion facility to support economic recovery and resilience in Africa, helping to drive a new phase of growth that is focused on maximising resource value capture and domestic job creation. Other financial highlights include: Return on average equity at 12.1 per cent (2021: 9.7%) Net interest income up 49 per cent to $327.9 million (2021: $220.7 million). Total comprehensive income up 52 per cent to $285.3 million (2021: $188.2 million) Capital adequacy ratio at 34.3 per cent (2021: 33.2%).
Cost-to-income ratio at 22.7 per cent (2021: 22.9%); Earnings per share up 35 per cent to US$0.2437 (2021: $0.1809). AFC remains committed to accelerating structural transformation, value-addition and industrialisation to transform lives and usher in Africa’s era of prosperity. This is in conjunction with AFC’s stated policy of developing and de-risking critical infrastructure projects that support value addition of primary products at source and the development of viable economic zones to boost local capacity and job creation. “AFC is well positioned to continue playing a key role in delivering on our Africanwide development mandate and helping to close the continent’s infrastructure gap,” said Zubairu.
