GuarantCo wins Guarantor of the Year for Africa at the IJGlobal Awards

  • Date written
  • March, 2026

GuarantCo, part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), has been named Guarantor of the Year for Africa at the IJGlobal Awards. The award was presented last night during a ceremony at The Peninsula in London.

GuarantCo wins Guarantor of the Year for Africa at the IJGlobal Awards

The IJGlobal Awards celebrate standout greenfield and refinancing deals across the energy and infrastructure industry and the companies delivered them during 2025.

GuarantCo’s Africa Investments team were recognised for their three pathfinding transactions that reached financial close last year. They collected the award alongside their partners, Symbiotics and M&G Investments, which were integral to the delivery of these deals by providing the investment vehicles and liquidity for them, respectively.

GuarantCo provided a USD 50 million payment default guarantee for Senegal’s first-ever sustainability-linked securitisation that was dual labelled as a Green Bond. It was sponsored by the national power utility, Société Nationale d’Electricité du Sénégal (Senelec), with the local bond arranged and managed by BOAD Titrisation. The proceeds of the transaction will finance nine new renewable energy projects in Senegal, enabling reliable access to energy for 1.8 million end users and avoiding an estimated 853k tCO₂e annually.

GuarantCo also provided guarantees in two separate transactions to build cashew processing capacity in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. Firstly in September, for a EUR 37 million loan to Valency International for a new processing and warehousing facility in Côte d’Ivoire. Followed in December by a USD 75 million debt facility for Robust International to construct a new plant in Ogun State, Nigeria. Both Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria are among the world’s largest producers of cashew nuts, but they currently lose much of the local economic value of this produce without the in-market capability to process it. Both deals are expected to deliver extensive benefit to their local economies through significantly increasing export revenues, local supply chain procurement and job creation.

Dave Chalila, Head of Africa Investments at GuarantCo, said:

“The team is honoured to be recognised for the innovative credit solutions we delivered in 2025 and the subsequent market transformation they will achieve. GuarantCo, as part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group, is at the forefront of driving sustainable development investment through the creation of pioneering and replicable structures. We hope these deals inspire the mobilisation of private capital for financing critical infrastructure across Africa.”

NOTES TO EDITORS

About GuarantCo

GuarantCo mobilises private sector local currency investment for infrastructure projects and supports the development of financial markets in lower income countries across Africa and Asia. GuarantCo is part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) and is funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia and Sweden, through the PIDG Trust, the Netherlands, through FMO and the PIDG Trust, France through a stand-by facility and Global Affairs Canada through a repayable facility. GuarantCo is rated AA- by Fitch and A1 by Moody’s in 2014. Since 2005, GuarantCo has enabled USD 7.1 billion of total investment and USD 6.8 billion of private sector investment, giving 44.8 million people access to infrastructure and creating around 248,000 jobs in Africa and Asia. GuarantCo’s activities are managed by GuarantCo Management Company which is part of Cardano Development. www.guarantco.com

About PIDG

The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) is an innovative infrastructure development and finance organisation which mobilises private investment in sustainable and inclusive infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa and south and south-east Asia. PIDG investments promote socio-economic development within a just transition to net zero emissions, combat poverty and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. PIDG delivers its ambition in line with its values of pioneering, partnership, safety, inclusivity, and urgency.

 

[PIDG offers technical assistance for upstream, early-stage activities and concessional capital; invests in early-stage project development and project and corporate equity through its project development solution, InfraCo; its debt solution EAAIF (the Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund) is one of the first and more successful blended debt funds in low-income markets; and its guarantees solution, GuarantCo, provides credit enhancement and local currency solutions to de-risk projects. PIDG also supports a growing portfolio of local credit enhancement facilities, which unlock domestic institutional capital for infrastructure financing.

 

Since 2002, PIDG has supported 258 infrastructure projects to financial close, which provided an estimated 232 million people with access to new or improved infrastructure. PIDG is funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia and Sweden, and Global Affairs Canada. www.pidg.org