The financing problem extends beyond the amount of money available. The World Bank has identified foreign exchange exposure, limited domestic capital markets, and the difficulty commercial banks face in providing long-term local currency financing as structural constraints on infrastructure investment in emerging markets. These conditions can make otherwise economically viable projects difficult to structure within conventional lending frameworks.
There is growing recognition that private capital will have to play a larger role, while the nature of that capital is also evolving. IFC research covering private infrastructure investments across 36 African countries found that improvements in regulatory quality, rule of law and foreign exchange frameworks could materially increase private investment. Meanwhile, the Bank for International Settlements has identified tokenization as an emerging financial architecture with potential to improve efficiency, broaden access, and change how claims on real and financial assets are represented and transferred, while emphasizing that regulatory and governance questions remain significant.
For Kirstie McLaughlin, co-founder of Colombo Capital, these dynamics point toward a fundamental reconsideration of how infrastructure investment is approached. Colombo Capital is a platform focused on strategic investment and partnerships, and McLaughlin believes the central challenge in Africa is frequently the distance between international capital and the realities of local execution. Her view is that investors can overemphasize sovereign and political risk while overlooking the underlying economics of assets and the importance of credible local participation.
“What Western investors often misunderstand is that the fundamental question is trust in the structure surrounding the investment,” McLaughlin states. She points to government policy, currency movement, trade restrictions, and unfamiliar regulatory environments as factors that can discourage outside investors. In her assessment, those concerns can become so dominant that investors fail to evaluate the productive asset itself and the long-term demand supporting it.
McLaughlin argues that infrastructure requires a different investment mindset because the underlying assets can have unusually long economic lives. Roads, power generation, and other essential infrastructure can produce revenue over decades when they are appropriately structured and operated. The challenge, in her view, is matching patient capital with partners capable of navigating the local environment.
“That requires patience, time, and the right skilled partner,” McLaughlin remarks. “Infrastructure is a long-term investment. The quality of the local partnership can determine whether the capital is actually converted into a productive asset.”
That principle is central to McLaughlin’s perspective on Colombo Capital’s work in Uganda. The company is using a geothermal project governed by a 35-year agreement as a practical example of how infrastructure financing can be structured around a real asset and local participation. McLaughlin notes that the project demonstrates why international investors need more than a financial model. They need a credible mechanism for execution within the country where the asset exists.
For McLaughlin, the local joint-venture approach is particularly important because infrastructure development can create economic effects that extend well beyond the asset itself. A capable domestic partner can contribute market knowledge, relationships, workforce development, and an understanding of regulatory conditions. The resulting structure, she argues, can give communities a greater stake in the project’s success while allowing international capital to participate through a more informed framework.
This perspective also shapes McLaughlin’s interest in real-world asset tokenization. The concept involves representing claims on physical or financial assets digitally, potentially allowing investment interests to be structured and transferred through programmable financial infrastructure. The BIS has acknowledged potential benefits including more efficient settlement, broader access, and greater flexibility, while emphasizing that tokenization remains an emerging field with regulatory and operational risks. McLaughlin sees that evolution as particularly relevant to infrastructure because it could create additional mechanisms for connecting capital with identifiable productive assets.
She believes the significance extends beyond a single project or country. As Africa seeks to close infrastructure and energy gaps while governments face competing fiscal demands, the question increasingly becomes how to build financing structures that recognize local conditions, align incentives, and accommodate long investment horizons.
“Five years from now, I believe infrastructure financing will be increasingly connected to real-world assets,” McLaughlin states. “The opportunity is to build a system where capital is connected directly to productive infrastructure and where local communities and investors can participate in the value that infrastructure creates.”
Africa’s infrastructure opportunity is therefore inseparable from the evolution of its financing architecture. The continent has no shortage of roads, power projects, energy resources, and other assets capable of supporting long-term economic development. The more consequential question is whether capital markets can develop structures sophisticated enough to recognize their potential.
“Capital will always follow opportunity when the structure makes sense,” McLaughlin states. “The future of infrastructure investment in Africa will depend on how intelligently we connect the asset, the capital, and the people who know how to build it.”