AfDB and AFD deepen partnership with new 2026–2031 MoU, targeting energy, transport and SME finance across Africa
The African Development Bank (AfDB) and France's Agence Française de Développement (AFD) signed a renewed memorandum of understanding on November 10, 2025, at the Paris Peace Forum, extending cooperation through 2031. The partnership has already delivered 17 jointly financed projects across 14 African countries since 2021, with energy accounting for nearly half of joint financing.
The new agreement expands collaboration from early project preparation through implementation, focusing on energy transition, transport corridors, water and sanitation, regional connectivity, agriculture, private sector development, and digital infrastructure. It also targets critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, data governance, AI, and climate resilience. Both institutions will combine blended finance, guarantees, catalytic finance and carbon finance to crowd in private capital, and explore European co-financing platforms.
For Nigeria, this builds on concrete AfDB commitments: a $200 million facility to the Bank of Industry (May 2026) for long-term business funding, $61 million to the Development Bank of Nigeria for women-led MSMEs, and a $500 million Federal Government loan for the Economic Governance and Energy Transition Support Programme (November 2025). Ongoing joint projects include the Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (i-DICE) programme and support for regional corridors like Abidjan-Lagos.
AFD has also pledged €1 billion to Mission 300, the AfDB-World Bank initiative to connect 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030.
With AfDB and AFD aligning more capital toward Nigerian SMEs, energy infrastructure and digital economy projects, the question becomes: are you positioned to access the new financing windows opening through BOI, DBN and i-DICE, or will your competitors get there first?