The Missing Middle in Africa’s Investment Story
By Duncan Onyango, CEO, Trade Catalyst Africa
In Addis Ababa last month, one phrase kept coming up in every serious conversation about Gulf investment in Africa: project preparation.
It may not be as eye-catching as a multi-billion-dollar investment announcement, but it is often the deciding factor between projects that secure financing and those that never move beyond the drawing board. As governments across Africa strengthen relationships with Gulf investors, this distinction is becoming increasingly important. Investor interest in the continent is growing, particularly across infrastructure, logistics, manufacturing and agriculture. The current challenge, however, is ensuring there is a pipeline of opportunities that are ready for investment.
I was in Addis for the opening panel of the Gulf–Africa Strategic Partnership Initiative (GASPI), convened by ODI Global Advisory together with Ethiopia’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and Gravitas Sovereign & Strategic Advisory. The question on everyone’s mind was simple. African governments are now talking seriously with Gulf investors. So what happens next?
My answer was this. Large institutional investors rarely become the first money into a project. Before committing capital, they want confidence that the commercial model has been tested, that the risks are understood and that the project has been properly structured. Those conditions are rarely created during financing negotiations. They are built much earlier through careful project preparation.
That is why project preparation deserves more attention than it usually gets. It is the work that gives investors confidence to commit capital. Preparing a project well means answering the questions investors will always ask before they commit. Is there real demand? Who carries which risks? How will revenue actually be generated? What approvals are needed, and how long will they take? Can this scale beyond one site or one deal? The stronger those answers, the easier it becomes for long-term capital to say commit.
This is where catalytic institutions have an important role to play. At Trade Catalyst Africa, much of our work happens before commercial investors arrive. We help strengthen business cases, structure transactions and reduce early risks so that promising opportunities become investment-ready projects. In doing so, we help create the conditions for development finance, commercial lenders and institutional investors to participate with greater confidence.
Our work on green freight in the Horn of Africa demonstrates this approach. The objective is not simply to introduce electric trucks along the Djibouti–Dire Dawa corridor. It is to build the ecosystem that allows the market to succeed by bringing together charging infrastructure, logistics operators, digital corridor systems and blended finance into a commercially viable proposition. Rather than financing a single asset, the focus is on creating the conditions that allow private investment to scale.
The same principle applies across Africa’s trade landscape. A modern border post delivers greater value when customs procedures are efficient. A transport corridor becomes more competitive when businesses operating along it can access finance. Industrial parks succeed when manufacturers can move goods reliably and cost-effectively to regional and international markets. Investment does not thrive because of isolated assets. It thrives when the wider system works.
That is where I believe Gulf–Africa cooperation has an opportunity to become genuinely transformational. Rather than supporting projects individually, there is scope to establish a revolving project preparation facility backed by Gulf capital. Such a facility could finance feasibility studies, commercial structuring and early-stage de-risking across a pipeline of projects, creating a stronger flow of investment-ready opportunities while giving long-term investors greater confidence to deploy capital at scale.
The Addis Ababa dialogue was the first of four regional conversations leading to the inaugural GASPI Summit in Abidjan in 2027.
