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Cape Town - The International Finance Corporation (IFC) plans to spend up to $300m in the financial year ending June and another $400m in the following year on new African telecommunications projects that are not commercially attractive to traditional financiers.
"We would very much be looking to do $200m to $400m a year for our own account in Africa and ideally helping mobilise funding from other sources - commercial banks, other development institutions - to double or triple that," said Kent Lupberger, IFC's global head for technology, media and telecom.
The private sector financing arm of the World Bank previously did a lot of financing of cellular companies but is doing less of that now, because the firms are established and have easier access to financing.
Instead, it is focusing on newer business opportunities such as data centres, so-called last mile broadband connectivity, tower sharing and IT services among others, Lupberger told Reuters at an industry conference late on Wednesday.
