Africa, with 17% of the world's population and widely recognized for its competitive investment returns, represents one of the most significant untapped opportunities in global markets. FDI to the continent rose to $97 billion in 2024, around 6% of global flows, signalling growing investor confidence. Beyond these headline figures lies a vast frontier of underserved communities, purpose-driven businesses and entire local economies ready to scale up with the right support.

The Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Roadmap for Africa, developed by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Economic Forum, aims to address this challenge by presenting a framework to foster partnerships between civil society, humanitarian and development organizations, governments and private sector companies to mobilize investment in Africa’s frontier markets.

The roadmap will contribute to the HRI initiative's ambition, announced through a global call to action in 2023, to mobilize $10 billion of commercial and catalytic capital to enable 1,000 businesses to scale up in frontier markets by 2030. By 2027, AfDB and the HRI initiative aim to launch up to five country alliances, with the goal to iterate, refine and expand the approach in 10 markets by 2030.