Financial intermediaries are institutions, public or private, that facilitate access to capital investment finance for cities and local governments by way of creating better-than-market conditions for the debtor.
This companion piece to the ODI publication, Bridging Africa’s urban infrastructure gap: financial intermediaries for facilitating cities’ access to debt finance in Africa, provides case studies of four such institutions in Africa:
- Development Bank of Southern Africa, a regional development finance institution with a city’s portfolio.
- Development Fund for Local Authorities in Malawi, which was established through a partnership between the Government of Malawi and World Bank.
- Fonds d’Equipment Communal in Morocco, Africa’s oldest subnational development bank.
- Caisses des Dépôts et Consignations in Gabon, a type of institution that exists across several francophone African countries.
Although the case studies offer a limited snapshot of the diversity of subnational financial intermediaries, the deep dive into these four provides more general lessons and policy recommendations.
