Why the Development Bank of Southern Africa is shifting its strategy
The regional bank is targeting early-stage investment to attract greater private-sector interest
The Development Bank of Southern Africa, which disbursed R12.4bn in infrastructure finance for the year to March, will direct more funds to early-stage investing to crowd in greater private-sector investment, says client coverage head Mohan Vivekanandan. Early-stage investing could help a project become bankable, attracting commercial banks and other private investors, Vivekanandan said on Tuesday. For the year to March, the bank catalysed R31.9bn in investment from third parties. This contributed the lion’s share to its total infrastructure development impact of R48.2bn and compared with R12.4bn in disbursements from its own balance sheet. It is now widely accepted that traditional development finance institutions (DFIs) should work together with private-sector investors to maximise impact. In 2015, a cohort of DFIs coined the phrase, in a paper by the same title, "from billions to trillions". One of the ideas behind it is that to achieve the UN sustainable development goals, priva...
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