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Financing Africa’s Next 125 Years: UBA UK Joins the Debate on Unlocking Private Capital
Financing Africa's Next 125 Years: UBA UK Joins the Debate on Unlocking Private Capital
Why the Royal African Society's 125th anniversary matters for Africa-UK business
The Royal African Society’s 125th anniversary is less a celebration than a checkpoint on a century and a quarter of Africa-UK engagement, one that arrives as the relationship is being actively renegotiated around trade, capital and the terms on which international finance reaches African businesses. On 22 July 2026, the Society brought that renegotiation into sharp focus at the London Stock Exchange, convening African heads of state, development finance institutions, exchange leaders and private-sector bankers under one theme: what the next 125 years of Africa’s economic growth actually require.
UBA UK’s Chief Executive Officer, Lok Mishra, joined the Private Sector Financing session alongside senior representatives of Standard Chartered Bank and the Royal African Society, moderated by Ada Osakwe of Nuli. The panel’s brief was direct: how does private capital, at scale, reach African businesses, and what is stopping it?
How is UBA UK helping close Africa's trade finance gap?
UBA UK’s role is to convert the UBA Group’s presence across 20 African countries into practical, bankable connections for London-based capital. That means originating trade finance, correspondent banking and payment flows in London and directing them towards African businesses that need them, under full UK regulatory oversight rather than through an offshore or representative arrangement.
The scale of the task is considerable. Africa’s trade finance gap stood at an estimated $74-92 billion in 2024 and could widen to as much as $102.6 billion by 2027 under a stressed scenario. Closing it depends on financing reaching productive sectors, including infrastructure, energy, agriculture, manufacturing and technology, rather than sovereign balance sheets alone. UBA UK’s toolkit, spanning letters of
credit, structured trade finance, correspondent banking and treasury services, is built around exactly that infrastructure, reinforced by a March 2026 letter of intent with British International Investment on trade finance and working-capital access for African SMEs.
Why does Africa's risk still get mispriced internationally?
Much of the answer lies in how risk is measured. International pricing frequently treats an entire country, or Africa as a whole, as the unit of risk, rather than assessing the specific transaction, counterparty and sector involved. The evidence does not support that approach: African Development Bank analysis puts Africa’s infrastructure investment loss rate at around 1.7% over fourteen years, compared with roughly 13% in Latin America and 10% in Eastern Europe.
Part of the gap is structural. Around 22 of Africa’s 53 countries carry no sovereign credit rating at all, leaving investors to extrapolate from limited information. UNDP research estimates these mispricing costs African borrowers in the region of $74.5 billion a year in excess interest and forgone lending, though ratings agencies dispute part of this, arguing their models reflect underlying fundamentals rather than bias. What is not in dispute is that better, longer-run transaction-performance data, shared across banks, development finance institutions and export credit agencies, would allow capital to be priced on demonstrated performance rather than assumption.
What would unlock private capital for Africa at greater scale?
The panel’s clearest conclusion was that scale and standardisation, not more isolated schemes, is what mobilises private capital at the size Africa needs. Guarantee providers such as MIGA, ATIDI, GuarantCo and individual development finance institutions each add value, but their separate structures raise transaction costs and limit how much any single institutional investor is prepared to commit.
The multiplier effect of well-structured risk-sharing is already visible. A $24.7 million guarantee facility from the African Trade & Investment Development Insurance agency mobilised $365.5 million in private project financing in 2025, roughly fifteen times its own value, enabling 182 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity. Institutional investors globally hold an estimated $4 trillion in assets yet allocate less than 2.7% of it to African infrastructure and productive sectors. A single, well-governed, standardised structure, of the kind MIGA is already designing to mobilise $23 billion in private capital through its expanded Africa guarantee programme, is what allows pension funds and insurers to commit at that scale.
What does this mean for organisations doing business into and out of Africa?
The through-line across the day’s sessions was consistent: London’s capital markets, insurance and legal infrastructure are only as useful to Africa as the transaction-level
bridges built between them and African businesses. That is the role UBA UK occupies: a UK-regulated wholesale bank, drawing on the UBA Group’s on-the-ground presence across the continent, positioned to originate and structure the trade, treasury and correspondent banking relationships that let international capital move into African markets on commercial terms, and let African trade move out into the world.
For organisations weighing how to structure their African trade and investment activity, that combination of UK regulatory standing and pan-African reach is precisely why UBA UK is positioned as the partner of choice for business into and out of Africa.
Source: African Development Bank (AfDB); United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA); United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); African Trade & Investment Development Insurance (ATIDI); Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), via Reuters
Frequently asked questions
UBA UK is the London-based, UK-regulated wholesale bank within the UBA Group, authorised by the PRA and FCA since 2018, connecting the Group’s presence across 20 African countries to international capital markets.
Africa’s trade finance gap was estimated at $74-92 billion in 2024, and could widen to $102.6 billion by 2027 under a stressed scenario.
Pricing frequently relies on country- or continent-level assumptions rather than transaction-level evidence, compounded by a lack of sovereign credit ratings across much of the continent.
A single, standardised, large-scale risk-sharing and credit-enhancement structure, bringing banks, development finance institutions, export credit agencies and insurers together, rather than multiple smaller, separate guarantee schemes.
Source: BCEAO; African Development Bank, 2026 African Economic Outlook
To learn more about UBA UK’s correspondent banking, trade finance and treasury services, email info@ubauk.com