Samaila Zubairu has spent three decades channelling capital into the infrastructure Africa needs to industrialise, and as President and Chief Executive of the Africa Finance Corporation, he has turned that mission into one of the continent’s most compelling development-finance stories. In seven years at the helm, he has more than doubled AFC’s country membership, more than quadrupled its investments and more than tripled its profits.
His tenure has been defined by scale and ambition. Under his leadership AFC has completed the largest renewable-energy acquisition on the continent and driven some of Africa’s most consequential clean-energy projects, from the Xlinks initiative in Morocco to Infinity Power, Africa’s largest pure-play renewable-energy platform. That record has earned honours including Pan-African Champion at the 2024 Africa CEO Forum Awards. His influence reaches across global finance: he chairs the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions, co-chairs the B20 South Africa Task Force on Finance and Infrastructure, and co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Network to Mobilize Clean Energy Investment in emerging markets.
His grounding is in deal-making: as pioneer CFO of Dangote Cement he launched Africa’s largest syndicated project-finance facility. An Eisenhower Fellow and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, he holds a degree in accounting from Ahmadu Bello University. A passionate advocate of African value capture and industrialisation, Zubairu has become a leading voice for the proposition that Africa can finance its own transformation.
