General News
Africa Doesn’t Need More Aid. It Needs Better Law
By Eric Gumbo, MBS
For decades, the dominant story of African development has been one of dependency: waiting for the World Bank loan, the IMF arrangement, the donor conference, the debt relief round. That story is not entirely wrong, the only concerns are; must it be our default setting? Do we have more sustainable options? Kenya, with little fanfare, is rewriting the script in answering these existential questions.
Eric Gumbo
Over the past few years, Kenya has enacted a sweep of legislation culminating into the most ambitious domestic capital mobilization framework on the African continent. Its centrepiece, a KSh 5 trillion National Infrastructure Fund, which is not another borrowing vehicle. It is something structurally different: a mechanism designed to make Kenya’s own savings, its pension funds, its retail investors, its private equity market, do the work that foreign debt was never built to do sustainably.
The problem it is solving is rarely discussed in development economics circles, though it should be. Africa’s infrastructure financing gap, estimated at $68 to $108 billion a year by the African Development Bank, is not primarily a shortage of money. There is no shortage of capital in the world. The shortage is of investable projects: opportunities where private capital can be mobilised without facing crippling sovereign risk, opaque regulatory environments, or legal frameworks that shift mid-contract. That uncertainty is not a footnote. It is the reason trillions of dollars in global private capital have largely bypassed the continent.
“The shortage is not of money. It is of investable projects, and the legal certainty that makes them possible.”
The National Infrastructure Fund established as an Act of Parliament addresses this directly. By absorbing sovereign and legal risk at the project level, it removes the uncertainty that forces private investors to demand prohibitive risk premiums or walk away entirely. It acts as a structural buffer between the Kenyan state and the market, giving development finance institutions, private equity funds, domestic pension managers, and local retail investors a common platform on which to participate without exposure to the regulatory volatility that has stalled projects across the continent for a generation.
The financing pathway is streamlined: due diligence burdens shrink, incentives align between public and private participants, and patient long-term capital, the kind infrastructure actually requires, finds a credible home. The KSh 5 trillion pipeline of dams, roads, and urban transit becomes financeable not because Kenya has borrowed more, but because the NIF makes the risk profile legible and acceptable to capital that previously had nowhere in Kenya to go.
This matters beyond Kenya’s borders. Rwanda built a competitive economy from near-zero after 1994. Botswana converted diamond revenues into one of Africa’s most stable development trajectories through the Pula Fund. Mauritius became a continental financial hub through regulatory design alone. These nations did not succeed by waiting for the global financial architecture to serve them. They engineered their own conditions for growth. Kenya is now doing the same, at greater scale, and with instruments far more sophisticated than anything its predecessors had available.
The human dimension of this architecture is equally significant. The recently executed 65 percent IPO of the Kenya Pipeline Company, targeting KSh 100 billion on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, was the largest state offering since Safaricom’s landmark 2008 listing. When an ordinary Kenyan in Kisumu or Eldoret can hold shares in the pipeline that carries fuel to their town, development stops being something administered from above and becomes something people own, a democratisation of sovereign wealth. A proposed Sovereign Wealth Fund, with an intergenerational component anchored in the Kenyan laws, extends the same logic forward in time: today’s resource revenues become tomorrow’s infrastructure, rather than today’s debt service.
None of this works without legal ingenuity. The legal profession across Africa must stop treating transformative legislation as a courtroom opportunity and start treating it as architecture to be designed soundly from the outset; an opportunity to co-create with an intention of catalysing and not curtailing growth. Innovation in finance and innovation in law must move together, or neither moves fast enough. In this journey, perfection ought to be modelled in a kaizenian fashion; incremental. Waiting for perfection may altogether kill the opportunities and ultimate achievements.
As Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the architect of Dubai’s own transformation from desert outpost to global financial hub, once observed: “Time is too precious to waste on postponing our people’s dreams and expectations.” Africa’s legal community would script history to take that as its mandate.
The World Bank estimates that a 10 percent increase in infrastructure investment can raise long-term GDP growth by one to two percentage points in emerging economies. Those numbers translate into jobs, hospitals, schools, and the material improvement of lives. Kenya’s new framework will not automatically deliver them. Discipline, transparency, and governance that is genuinely insulated from political interference will determine whether the architecture performs or corrodes.
Africa does not need to borrow its way to prosperity. It needs to build its way there—using the assets it already owns, the savings it already holds, and the institutions it must now have the courage to build.
The opportunity is not merely economic. It is civilisational.
Dr Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, accountant-general of the federation, has warned that the federal government may reject loan facilities from the World Bank if delays in approval and disbursement persist, saying prolonged timelines could undermine the country’s willingness to proceed with such arrangements.
The warning was contained in a press statement issued on Friday by Bawa Mokwa, director of press and public relations at the office of the accountant-general of the federation.
Ogunjimi, who spoke in Abuja during a courtesy visit by a World Bank delegation led by Mrs Treed Lane, stressed that Nigeria expects timely processing of funding requests, given that the facilities are loans and not grants.
He said, “If approvals take more than six months, the Nigerian Government may no longer honour such arrangements,” highlighting concerns over bureaucratic delays in accessing development financing.
The AGF noted that as a responsible borrower, Nigeria should not be subjected to prolonged approval processes that could affect project execution timelines and broader development objectives.
He therefore urged the World Bank to “expedite the approval and disbursement of project funds to Nigeria” to support the country’s priorities.
Ogunjimi emphasised that the loans carry repayment obligations, making it imperative that disbursement processes align with project schedules and fiscal planning frameworks.
He further disclosed that the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation had begun addressing key issues raised earlier by the World Bank, particularly in public financial management and audit reporting.
According to him, the 2023 Audit Report would be submitted to the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation within two weeks, while work on the 2024 and 2025 audit reports was already underway.
The AGF also assured the delegation that steps were being taken to resolve concerns around the digitalisation of the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System, noting that obsolete infrastructure was being replaced with modern technology to improve efficiency and service delivery.
He said the reforms were part of broader efforts to strengthen transparency, accountability, and the overall public financial management system in Nigeria.
Earlier in her remarks, the World Bank delegation leader, congratulated Ogunjimi on his recent appointment as African chairman of the Association of Accountants-General.
Lane also urged the Office of the Accountant-General to sustain its digitalisation drive and ensure the timely presentation of financial statements to the Auditor-General, noting that such measures were critical to achieving seamless public financial management processes.
The World Bank earlier explained why about six loans worth $2bn, signed for Nigeria in 2024, are yet to be disbursed nearly a year after the bank’s approval.
This came amid recent reports that the World Bank approved a total of $8.40bn (N12.89tn) in fresh loans to the country over the past two years, based on data from the bank’s official website.
The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) approved a $61 million financing package for the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) to expand access to affordable credit for women-owned and women-led businesses across Nigeria, particularly in the agricultural sector.
The financing comprises three instruments: a $50 million gender-focused line of credit; an $8 million concessional facility under the Agri-Food SME Catalytic Financing Mechanism (ACFM); and a $3 million grant under the Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative, funded by the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi).
This package demonstrates the Bank’s commitment to private sector-led growth by combining long-term financing, concessional resources, partial credit guarantees, and capacity-building support. It will be chanelled through DBN’s network of participating financial institutions to strengthen MSME lending and advance Nigeria’s inclusive economic transformation, particularly through women entrepreneurship and agricultural development.
A defining feature of this operation is its strong gender focus, with more than 95 percent of the total financing earmarked for WSMEs. This targeted approach aligns with the objectives of AFAWA and ACFM and the Bank’s broader commitment to narrowing the gender financing gap in Africa. The performance-based incentives under the AFAWA programme are expected to expand the number of eligible women-owned enterprises while increasing the share of women-focused lending within DBN’s MSME portfolio.
Commenting on the approval, Dr Abdul Kamara, Director General of the African Development Bank Group Nigeria Country Office, said: “Women entrepreneurs are one of Nigeria’s greatest economic assets and one of its most underleveraged. This operation reflects the African Development Bank’s commitment to unlocking economic opportunities for women.
“By working through DBN to reach women-owned businesses in agriculture, clean energy, healthcare, and beyond, we are not just expanding access to credit; the Bank is investing in the engine of Nigeria’s inclusive economic transformation.”
The approval further deepens a longstanding partnership between the African Development Bank and the Development Bank of Nigeria, dating back to the AfDB’s role in DBN’s establishment through start-up equity, long-term financing, and governance support, alongside the Federal Government of Nigeria and other development partners.
The operation aligns with the African Development Bank’s Four Cardinal Points framework, particularly the pillar on harnessing demographic transformation for economic development, as well as the Bank’s Ten-Year Strategy (2024-2033), which prioritises inclusive growth, private sector development, and gender equality.
It also supports Nigeria’s Country Strategy Paper (2025–2030), which emphasizes gender- and youth-inclusive green growth, and complements national priorities on entrepreneurship, inclusive development, and women’s economic empowerment.
The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) has announced the extension of weekend tax office operations across the country as part of preparations for the rollout of the Rev360 Phase I Tax Administration System.
In a public notice issued in Abuja on May 7, the Service stated that all Emerging, Medium, Large, and Government Business Offices nationwide will now open on Saturdays from May 8 to June 27, 2026.
According to the notice, the offices will operate between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
The NRS explained that the initiative is aimed at providing additional taxpayer support and improving service delivery during the implementation of the new tax administration platform for Medium and Emerging Taxpayer segments.
The Service noted that the extended Saturday operations are designed to assist taxpayers requiring guidance with the new system, facilitate seamless compliance during the June peak Companies Income Tax filing period, and improve access to tax services outside regular weekday hours.
It encouraged taxpayers to take advantage of the initiative to resolve tax-related matters, seek necessary guidance, and ensure timely compliance with their tax obligations.
“The NRS remains dedicated to delivering efficient, transparent, and taxpayer-focused services,” the statement read.
The notice was signed by Zacch Adedeji, PhD, Executive Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service. “You say Transformation, We say Rev360.”
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