Infra Dig – Philippe Valahu on InfraCredit Nigeria

The focus of Infra Dig turns once again to Africa and a particularly interesting development that signals the maturity of Nigeria as an infrastructure / energy market. 

Philippe Valahu – chief executive of Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) – joins IJGlobal editorial director Angus Leslie Melville once again, this time to talk about his organisation’s involvement in InfraCredit Nigeria. 

This latest episode runs for a little more than 21 minutes and sees Philippe take the listener through PIDG’s exit from its preference share investment in InfraCredit Nigeria and its strategy to repeat this success around other African markets.

This latest episode can be accessed on Spotify (embedded above) as well as through the Amazon service. It is also hosted across a slew of other platforms, open access on all of them.

Philippe (pictured right) introduces PIDG, an organisation that has been active for 25 years and its purpose is to develop and finance infrastructure projects in Sub Saharan Africa and South-east Asia.

PIDG is the only entity that provides solutions across the lifecycle of an infrastructure asset from upstream to the operation of the asset, covering the full capital structure.

Philippe starts off by taking the listener through PIDG’s involvement in InfraCredit Nigeria.

“Eight or nine years ago, we began to work with the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority in Nigeria with a view to setting up a vehicle that would mimic what our own guarantee arm does,” says Philippe.

“We have a guarantee arm within the PIDG group, GuarantCo, that provides credit enhancement on local currency solutions. That could be bond issuances. That could be bank loans.

“On the back of the number of transactions we had done in the Nigerian market, we felt with the NSIA, that the market was right to set up a stand-alone entity that would be AAA-rated in the Nigerian market and would be managed privately in Nigeria.

“Working with NSIA, we set that up. We put in callable capital through our guarantees. We put in equity and then other equity players came in for different types of contributions from AFC, KfW and others.

“That was the start of a successful story to find a way to tap into local institutional capital as part of the solution to funding the infrastructure needs of the country.”

Tune in to this latest episode to hear more about the role InfraCredit Nigeria has played in driving investments into Nigerian infrastructure and how this model is being replicated across Sub Saharan Africa.