ARM-Harith Infrastructure Investments Ltd. has secured a first close of about $76 million for a climate transition fund aimed at channeling African institutional capital into infrastructure projects, marking a key step in efforts to bridge the continent’s infrastructure financing gap and accelerate investment in energy transition assets.
The fund manager said Monday that the vehicle, targeting a final close of $200 million, is structured as Africa’s first integrated multi-currency blended-finance infrastructure equity fund, allowing investors to participate in both U.S. dollar and local-currency denominations within a single platform.
The structure is designed to address a longstanding challenge in African infrastructure financing, where projects generate revenues largely in local currencies while funding is often raised in hard currencies, exposing developers and investors to foreign-exchange risks.
By combining local and dollar-denominated capital, ARM-Harith said the fund would help reduce currency mismatches at the asset level while creating a framework that better suits the needs of domestic institutional investors, particularly pension funds, whose liabilities are largely denominated in local currencies.
