HRI Roadmap for Africa: Mobilizing Finance for Africa’s Frontier Markets

The HRI Roadmap for Africa, a collaboration between the World Economic Forum and the African Development Bank, aims to address the investment deficit in fragile and crisis-affected African regions. It introduces a 'HRI framework for frontier market cooperation' that coordinates roles for humanitarian actors, development partners, and private investors to de-risk and scale impact-driven businesses. The roadmap operationalizes this through 'country alliances' led by 'country champions' across three phases: alignment, planning, and implementation. The overarching goal is to contribute to a global target of mobilizing $10 billion in capital to scale 1,000 businesses in frontier markets by 2030, with a specific target of launching up to five country alliances in Africa between 2025 and 2027.

• Frontier markets in Africa suffer from a growing investment deficit exacerbated by declining Official Development Assistance (ODA) and a reliance on short-term humanitarian relief, which often fails to provide long-term systemic solutions.
• In 2024, 91% of UN-coordinated interagency appeals were focused on protracted crisis responses, highlighting the inefficiency of repetitive, temporary interventions over sustainable investment.
• Despite high perceived risks, African frontier markets offer significant untapped potential; for example, the annual market size in refugee-hosting areas of Uganda is estimated at $485 million.
• The HRI framework for frontier market cooperation defines specific roles for stakeholders to create enabling conditions: humanitarian and development actors conduct risk assessments and build pipelines, while capital providers use blended finance and de-risking tools to attract commercial capital.
• The roadmap is operationalized through 'country alliances' led by a 'country champion' and supported by a steering board of 5-10 senior representatives, following a three-phase process: alignment (3-6 months), planning (6-12 months), and implementation (unlimited).
• The African Development Bank (AfDB) integrates this roadmap into its Ten-Year Strategy (2024-2033), focusing on unlocking capital power, rebuilding financial sovereignty, leveraging demographics, and building resilient infrastructure.
• The HRI initiative aims to mobilize $10 billion of commercial and catalytic capital to enable 1,000 businesses to scale-up in frontier markets by 2030, with a goal to expand the African roadmap to 10 markets by that date.

APA

World Economic Forum (2026). HRI Roadmap for Africa: Mobilizing Finance for Africa’s Frontier Markets. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_HRI_Roadmap_for_Africa_2026.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. HRI Roadmap for Africa: Mobilizing Finance for Africa’s Frontier Markets. 2026. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_HRI_Roadmap_for_Africa_2026.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=HRI Roadmap for Africa: Mobilizing Finance for Africa’s Frontier Markets |date=May 2026 |url=https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_HRI_Roadmap_for_Africa_2026.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2026hri, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{HRI Roadmap for Africa: Mobilizing Finance for Africa’s Frontier Markets}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2026}, month = may, url = {https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_HRI_Roadmap_for_Africa_2026.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }