A number of United States pension funds and foundations are seeking to inject over Ksh.60 billion into Africa as they onboard Kenya Pension Fund Investment Consortium (KEPFIC) for investment opportunities.
The funds will be targeted into different sectors in the economy such as infrastructure, education, housing, agriculture, and healthcare among others.
Such a move has been informed by Kenya’s recent interventions in the Public-Private Partnerships Bill, 2021 (PPP) which has seen investments shoot up by 600 percent in the past year.
The PPP law allows entities in PPP deals to single-source work to speed up projects under the framework where Kenya has struggled to attract private investors since it came into force in 2013.
The Director General of the Directorate of Public-Private Partnerships Christopher Kirigua noted the body achieved financial close on seven projects.
Just a year since its establishment, PPP has since attracted several investors from Asia and Europe following the reforms in its framework.
According to Kirigua, his office is looking at creating credit-linked notes which will allow institutional investors to participate in a big way in infrastructure development.
“We should be able to see more in this space. Actually, we just recently concluded a transaction in the road sector where we had a local pension fund invest,” said Kirigua.
Kirigua spoke at a forum hosted by KEPFIC, USAID and MiDA Advisors where he addressed a delegation of U.S institutional investors who were visiting Kenya to explore opportunities.
KEPFIC Head of Secretariat Ngatia Kirungie said the partnerships signals impactful growth, building infrastructure investment capacity amid rapid rate of urbanization.
