Santa Maria, Cabo Verde, March 13, 2025 (Lusa) - The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is to open a joint office with the World Bank in Equatorial Guinea, the IFC's vice-president for Africa announced on Thursday.
"In recent years we have significantly increased our presence in Lusophone Africa: today we have representatives in four of the six PALOP [Portuguese-Language African countries] and I am pleased to announce that we are opening a fifth joint office with the World Bank in Equatorial Guinea," said Sérgio Pimenta.
Sérgio Pimenta was speaking at the opening of the Lusophone Africa Investment Forum, organised by the IFC, the World Bank's private sector arm, on the island of Sal, Cabo Verde.
"Leveraging all the instruments of the World Bank Group, we have considerably increased our investments, with more than 39 projects worth around $4.2 billion (€3.8 billion) invested in the last seven years," he said.
The figures represent "a very important and significant change in operations and we are very grateful to our partners, particularly our private sector clients. Thanks to this collaboration, we have been able to support a large number of companies in Portuguese-language countries with long-term financing," he added.
At the forum's opening, he emphasised that, given the "climate of uncertainty" on the international scene, the private sector will have to play "a fundamental role" for the prosperity of the African continent.
The young and growing population combined with digitalisation and innovation are an advantage for long-term strategies that unite the public and private sectors with financial institutions.
Sérgio Pimenta identified three strategic sectors: tourism, agriculture — because Africa has "chronic food insecurity" and must respond to its needs — and the energy sector, with access levels in the PALOP countries being "well below the average" for the continent. More than 600 million Africans still lack access to energy.
Ulisses Correia e Silva, prime minister of Cabo Verde, reiterated the ambition to double the potential for economic growth with social inclusion, considering it "the great challenge if everything is not to remain the same" in African countries.
He said governments must create a favourable institutional and business environment and speed up the digital transition in public administration.
Cabo Verde's deputy prime minister and finance minister, Olavo Correia, emphasised this idea in the forum's first panel, launching a call for "creative solutions" to establish public-private partnerships to access capital and expertise and accelerate development.
Cabo Verde's government took advantage of the ceremony to honour Sérgio Pimenta with a medal of professional merit, presented on behalf of all Portuguese-language countries, said Ulisses Correia e Silva.
Today's IFC announcement on Equatorial Guinea focused on a country that is already part of the Lusophone Compact, a financing instrument.
The discovery of oil reserves off the coast of Equatorial Guinea by US companies in 1996 made it one of the countries with the highest per capita income in Africa, but the discovery did not translate into well-being for the population: in 2023 the nation ranked 145th out of 191 states on the United Nations Human Development Index.
Reports of poverty and hunger are frequent despite the country's limited freedoms: Equatorial Guinea (along with Angola) is among the African countries in Lusophony with the worst score in the "Freedom in the World 2025" report, published in February by the Freedom House organisation, and is listed in the "Not Free" category.
*** Lusa travelled at the invitation of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an institution of the World Bank *** LFO/ADB // ADB.
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