ARM-Harith Infrastructure Investments Limited has successfully closed the first tranche of capital, raising approximately $76 million for what it calls Africa’s first integrated multi-currency blended finance platform.
This climate transition fund is designed to tap into Africa’s substantial yet challenging pool of domestic institutional savings and redirect the necessary infrastructure the continent urgently needs but is unable to afford.
The fund, anchored by $20 million in catalytic capital from FSD Africa Investments and the African Development Bank’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa, is targeting a final close of $200 million. It is structured to receive investments in both US dollars and local currency within a single vehicle, a technical design choice that directly dismantles the currency mismatch that has historically made African infrastructure equity off-limits for the continent’s own pension funds.
The stakes are staggering. Africa needs $150 billion annually just to meet its infrastructure requirements, yet invests only half that amount. Its climate finance gap is wider still, receiving roughly $30 billion of the $300 billion required every year, according to the African Development Bank.
Meanwhile, African pension funds, insurance pools and sovereign wealth funds collectively manage over $700 billion in assets, the overwhelming majority of which sits offshore or in low-yield securities, generating returns for foreign markets while African roads, power grids and water systems go unbuilt.
ARM-Harith’s new fund is a direct structural assault on that paradox.
“This first close is both an achievement and an inflection point for ARM-Harith,” said Rachel More-Oshodi, Chief Executive Officer of ARM-Harith. “With our first fund, we demonstrated that domestic institutional capital can be mobilized into infrastructure equity. With this successor fund, we are building on that foundation by bringing local and hard-currency capital together within a single platform, better aligning the structure of the capital with the realities of African infrastructure assets. This is a fundamental redesign: one that recognizes local market realities, mobilizes domestic savings, attracts international capital, and allocates risk more intelligently. The institutions that are backing us understand the significance of this shift. They are not only investing in a fund; they are helping to shape a more practical, scalable way to finance the infrastructure Africa needs.”
The currency mismatch problem More-Oshodi references is not abstract. African infrastructure assets- power plants, toll roads, water utilities- typically generate revenues in local currency. But the funds financing them have historically been denominated in US dollars, forcing a structural misalignment between what projects earn and what investors are owed.
Currency depreciations, which have been severe and frequent across Sub-Saharan African markets over the past decade, turn that misalignment into direct financial loss, deterring international investors and making it economically irrational for domestic pension funds to participate. ARM-Harith’s multi-currency architecture eliminates that friction at the fund structure level, giving dollar investors dollar exposure while giving local pension funds instruments that match their own balance sheets and regulatory obligations.
The $20 million catalytic anchor from FSDAi and the AfDB’s SEFA is designed to absorb first-loss risk, de-risking the structure sufficiently to draw in domestic pension funds that regulatory frameworks and fiduciary obligations might otherwise keep on the sidelines.
“The successful first close of the ARM-Harith Successor Fund marks a major milestone for renewable energy investment in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Joao Duarte Cunha, Manager of the AfDB’s Renewable Energy Funds Division. “SEFA’s catalytic participation demonstrates the African Development Bank’s commitment to unlocking long-term institutional capital and shows how blended finance can mobilise private investment into sustainable infrastructure.”
Anne-Marie Chidzero, Chief Investment Officer at FSDAi, was precise about where the real barrier has always been.
“The constraint has never been capital itself, but the absence of investment products structured to meet pension funds’ liability-matching needs, particularly around tenure, risk allocation, and currency alignment,” she said. “Our investment structure was designed to bridge that gap — enabling pension funds to participate in infrastructure equity while remaining fully aligned with their investment objectives and obligations.”
ARM-Harith is not an untested name in this space. The firm carries over 80 years of combined investment experience across the continent and pioneered the mobilisation of Nigerian pension funds into African infrastructure equity over more than a decade.
Through its predecessor fund, it financed critical transport infrastructure and over 700 megawatts of installed power capacity, enabling approximately 22,500 jobs and avoiding an estimated 2.6 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually. The successor fund builds on that ledger, targeting projects that deliver both strong commercial returns and measurable climate and development impact across Sub-Saharan Africa’s energy, transport, digital, waste and water infrastructure sectors.
The timing could not be more pointed. Global development finance is contracting. Aid flows are under political pressure. African governments are carrying debt burdens that limit their own fiscal firepower. The continent’s infrastructure gap is not closing, it is widening.
Against that backdrop, ARM-Harith’s model, mobilising capital that already exists within Africa rather than waiting for it to arrive from outside, represents a structural pivot that development finance institutions, regional policymakers and private capital alike are increasingly treating not as a niche experiment but as the only credible path forward.
The fund will now proceed toward its $200 million final close target, deploying into essential infrastructure projects across Sub-Saharan Africa that deliver resilient cashflows alongside measurable climate and economic impact.
