What actually stops African projects reaching capital

The discussion settled on a distinction we returned to throughout the series: the difference between a project that is risky and a project that is unassessable. Capital prices the first and refuses the second, and most African agricultural projects are refused rather than priced.

We closed by mapping the pipeline stages where projects are lost, which became the outline of the first white paper.

We started the series with the question the rest of it exists to answer: there is no shortage of institutional capital looking for yield, and no shortage of African projects that need it. So why does so little of the first reach the second?

The conventional answers — political risk, currency risk, governance — are real but incomplete. They explain a wider spread. They do not explain an absence of transactions. Our argument in this session was that most projects never reach the point where a risk premium can even be priced, because the documents an investment committee needs in order to say yes have never been produced.

This session set up the thesis. The seven that followed tested it against specific instruments, specific documents, and eventually our own projects.

• Why "lack of capital" is the wrong diagnosis
• What an investment committee actually reads before it says yes
• Where African projects drop out of the pipeline — and at which stage
• The preparation gap: who is supposed to close it
• Open discussion