Leading pan-African private equity fund manager focused on sustainable energy and infrastructure investment, ARM-Harith Infrastructure Investments Limited, has designed plans to unlock African institutional capital at scale and accelerate investment in energy transition and climate resilient infrastructure across Sub-Saharan Africa.

ARM-Harith, while announcing the first close of its Successor Fund, a climate transition fund at $76 million equivalent, said it is the first integrated multi-currency blended finance platform purpose-built for African institutional investors, denominated in both US dollars and local currency within a single structure for investment into infrastructure equity.

This structural innovation, according to the firm, directly addresses one of the most persistent barriers to African infrastructure investment: the mismatch between hard currency fund structures and the local currency revenues generated by the assets they finance.

The fund will be deployed into essential infrastructure projects that deliver real-economy impact and resilient cash flows across climate-resilient assets in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Speaking on the development, Rachel More-Oshodi, Chief Executive Officer of ARM-Harith, said: “This first close is both an achievement and an inflection point for ARM-Harith. With our first fund, we demonstrated that domestic institutional capital can be mobilised into infrastructure equity. With this successor fund, we are building on that foundation by bringing local and hard-currency capital together within a single platform — better aligning the structure of the capital with the realities of African infrastructure assets.

“This is a fundamental redesign: one that recognizes local market realities, mobilizes domestic savings, attracts international capital, and allocates risk more intelligently. The institutions that are backing us to understand the significance of this shift. They are not only investing in a fund; they are helping to shape a more practical, scalable way to finance the infrastructure Africa needs.”

Meanwhile, Manager of AfDB’s Renewable Energy Funds Division, Joao Duarte Cunha, said: “The successful first close of the ARM-Harith Successor Fund marks a major milestone for renewable energy investment in sub-Saharan Africa. SEFA’s catalytic participation demonstrates the African Development Bank’s commitment to unlocking long-term institutional capital and shows how blended finance can mobilise private investment into sustainable infrastructure.”

On bridging the gap between pension capital and infrastructure equity, Anne-Marie Chidzero, Chief Investment Officer at FSDAi said: “The constraint has never been capital itself, but the absence of investment products structured to meet pension funds’ liability-matching needs, particularly around tenure, risk allocation, and currency alignment. Our investment structure was designed to bridge that gap, enabling pension funds to participate in infrastructure equity while remaining fully aligned with their investment objectives and obligations.”