In a recent interview with Reuters, Oando’s Group Chief Executive, Wale Tinubu, set out more than a financing strategy, outlining a structural shift in how Africa must think about funding its future. As Oando advances plans to raise about $750m for an extensive drilling campaign that could significantly increase production, the conversation extends beyond capital availability to the changing nature of that capital and the implications for Africa’s long-term energy security.
Global dynamics are already reshaping the funding landscape, as heightened geopolitical tensions and supply disruptions redirect investor attention toward comparatively stable regions such as West Africa, while traditional sources of capital continue to retreat.
European banks, once central to financing African hydrocarbons, have stepped back in response to evolving climate mandates and shifting risk priorities, creating a gap increasingly filled by alternative sources of funding, including Gulf institutions, private equity, trading houses, and African financial institutions.
This diverse mix of capital presents opportunities, but it also reinforces a deeper structural reality that Africa remains heavily exposed to external financing cycles when developing its most critical resources. Within this context, Tinubu’s position is both timely and instructive, highlighting the need for Africa to pool its own capital, including pension funds and other domestic sources, to support large-scale energy development.
His remarks also recognise the important role already being played by African financial institutions such as Afreximbank and Africa Finance Corporation, which have helped demonstrate that African capital, when organised at scale, can support trade, infrastructure, and industrial development across the continent.
Afreximbank’s mandate is centred on financing and expanding intra- and extra-African trade, and its recent performance underscores the scale of what coordinated African finance can achieve. The bank disbursed US$18.7bn in 2024, its highest annual disbursement to date, while its wider trade development work has continued to support African economies through financing, trade facilitation, and industrialisation initiatives.
Africa Finance Corporation offers a similar proof point in infrastructure, with an investment footprint across 36 African countries and more than US$17bn disbursed to projects across the continent. These institutions matter because they show that Africa is not starting from zero.
The continent already has platforms capable of mobilising and deploying capital into sectors that shape long-term growth. What is needed now is a deeper connection between these pan-African institutions, domestic institutional investors, pension funds, operators, and regulators, so that capital can flow with greater confidence into commercially viable projects that also serve strategic development priorities.
Over the past decade, African energy companies have raised substantial capital, much of it externally, to acquire and develop assets, enabling growth while simultaneously exposing the sector to external sentiment, policy shifts, and fluctuations in global capital flows.
As global institutions continue to rebalance their portfolios, Africa faces an inflection point where the question is no longer simply how to attract foreign capital, but how to mobilise capital that already exists within its own financial systems. The continent is not short of capital, as domestic pools of long-term funds, particularly pension assets, continue to grow steadily, yet remain concentrated in low-risk instruments with limited exposure to infrastructure and energy.