AUDA-NEPAD/ Africa investor’s (Ai) Infrastructure Co-Investment Platform, is an industry response designed to overcome investment obstacles with participation and support from long-term investors and African Heads of State and Governments.

It was set up with an initial infrastructure portfolio of USD1.5 billion and is expected to increase to USD3 billion in three years. The investment partners include a select group of African and global pension and sovereign wealth funds, committed to investing in cross-border infrastructure assets.

The platform instigates projects through Ai’s African Sovereign Wealth and Pension Fund Leaders Forum members; their infrastructure focused private equity firms, investment managers and a 500 strong network of Africa’s foremost private sector infrastructure project developers.

The co-investment portal, hosted at www.aiassetx.com,was established following extensive consultations with local and international asset owners and their trustees. They ranked the identification of qualifying infrastructure investment partners and investable projects as the single biggest challenge for domestic and global institutional investors, seeking to allocate to African infrastructure as an investable asset class.

AiAssetX is an online co-investment marketplace, designed to profile project and infrastructure investment opportunities, and securely connect accredited domestic and international asset owners and institutional infrastructure investors, with infrastructure project developers and infrastructure fund and investment managers working in Africa.

The AiAssetX platform uses blockchain technology to aggregate the capital introduction and capital raising process for sell side participants, and harmonises asset owners’ strategies to ensure that they can efficiently engage with project developers and fund managers; who have the requisite track record and expertise to enable the deployment of capital, and discharge fiduciary responsibilities in a transparent, predictable and measurable fashion.

AiAssetX is a smarter, easier and cheaper way to profile infrastructure investment opportunities and connect project owners and investment managers to institutional investors. It is a practical collaboration platform, which leverages the long-term investment horizon of public financial investors (pension funds and sovereign wealth funds) to invest in both direct investments, and fund and investment manager strategies that meet asset owners’ mandates and investment criteria.

The AUDA-NEPAD/ AiAssetX Infrastructure Co-Investment web portal was formally unveiled at the Ai Development Finance – Institutional Investor Roundtable held in partnership with the African Development Bank and NEPAD at the World Bank annual Meetings. The Roundtable convened global and Africa focused institutional, Development Finance Institutions (DFI) heads and African Ministers of Finance to engage in a dialogue on institutional investment in infrastructure.

AiAssetX was inspired by the Ai Sovereign Wealth and Pension Fund Leaders Forum to assist asset owners in leveraging NEPAD/ Ai’s franchise, collaborative technology solutions, project origination network and vast access to pools of domestic and global pension and sovereign wealth fund capital seeking African infrastructure investment opportunities.

For more information visit: www.aiassetx.com