CBZ Holdings Limited used a platform at the Africa Infrastructure & Energy Conference in London to set out its case for Zimbabwe as an emerging infrastructure investment destination, with Group Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Nyazema detailing mechanisms through which private capital could be mobilised into the country’s transport, energy, mining and digital infrastructure sectors.
Addressing delegates at the conference, whose theme centred on mobilising private capital for Africa’s infrastructure and energy needs, Mr Nyazema positioned CBZ Holdings as an institution capable of originating, structuring and executing complex infrastructure transactions on the continent’s behalf, rather than one reliant solely on external financiers to define its investment narrative.
Central to the presentation was acknowledgement that Zimbabwe’s infrastructure financing requirement, estimated at approximately US$3.5 billion, represents not merely a shortfall but a substantive opportunity for investors prepared to engage with well structured, revenue backed projects underpinned by public private partnerships. This reframing, away from a narrative of deficit and towards one of opportunity, reflects an increasingly assertive tendency among African financial institutions to author their own investment propositions rather than have them defined externally.
The centrepiece of the announcement was a proposed US$600 million infrastructure bond, intended to fund rehabilitation of Zimbabwe’s national road network, with particular emphasis on the North South Corridor and the Beira Corridor. These routes carry a significant proportion of regional freight and are considered strategically important to trade integration across the Southern African Development Community. Mr Nyazema indicated that CBZ Bank would act as lead issuer, with CBZ Capital serving as lead arranger and structuring adviser on behalf of the Zimbabwe National Road Administration.
Road infrastructure carries an estimated 80 per cent of Zimbabwe’s freight movement, according to the presentation, underscoring the logistical stakes attached to the corridors’ rehabilitation. Improvements are expected to reduce transport costs, strengthen regional connectivity and reinforce Zimbabwe’s position as a transit hub linking landlocked and coastal markets across Southern Africa, a role with implications for industrialisation and cross border commerce beyond Zimbabwe’s own borders.
Mr Nyazema argued that the more persistent constraint facing African infrastructure development is not an absence of capital but weak financial intermediation, an assessment consistent with commentary he has offered at other regional forums on the scale of capital held within African pension funds, insurance portfolios and commercial banking systems that remains underutilised domestically. CBZ Holdings’ financing model, he said, combines development finance institution partnerships, infrastructure bonds, blended finance structures and domestic pension and insurance capital, with the intention of unlocking savings held within the region before turning to international capital markets.
Beyond the bond mandate, CBZ Holdings pointed to a broader portfolio of infrastructure related work, including project finance syndications in the mining sector and capital markets development through the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange. The institution also referenced its role connecting projects to regional and continental development finance institutions, including Afreximbank and the Africa Finance Corporation, as part of a stated ambition to serve as a local execution partner for international investors rather than merely a conduit for foreign capital.
CBZ Holdings describes itself as Zimbabwe’s leading integrated financial services group, with total assets exceeding US$1.8 billion and a market presence spanning more than four decades. The institution’s public financial disclosures over the past year point to a sustained expansion of its balance sheet and continued diversification of funding sources, a trajectory CBZ has previously discussed at other UK based investment forums.
With regulatory approval already secured, attention now turns to the pace of investor uptake and the timeline for deployment of the bond, factors that will determine how quickly the proposed rehabilitation of the North South and Beira corridors moves from mandate to execution.
