ICRF

The Infrastructure Climate Resilient Fund (ICRF) is a targeted private equity vehicle led by the Africa Finance Corporation and managed by its subsidiary, AFC Capital Partners.

Aimed at addressing Africa's severe climate finance gap, the fund is valued at US$750 million. It focuses on climate-proofing infrastructure — roads, rail, telecommunications, ports and renewable energy — so it can withstand extreme weather.

Climate-resilient infrastructure projects across Africa often struggle to move from ambition to investment. The opportunity is enormous, but the market is fragmented.

Project information is held in different formats, readiness levels are difficult to compare, and financiers, suppliers and project owners often lack a shared view of what is actually needed to move a project forward.

For project proponents, that means slow access to the right capital, unclear expectations from investors, and repeated effort preparing information for different audiences. For financiers, it creates a high-friction discovery process where identifying credible, investment-ready opportunities takes too long. For suppliers and technical partners, it can be hard to find relevant projects early enough to add value.

The result is a market where good projects remain invisible, promising opportunities lose momentum, and funding conversations start later than they should.

The ICRF Platform was designed to accelerate climate-resilient infrastructure investment across Africa by bringing projects, financiers, suppliers and knowledge into a single environment.

Its goal is to reduce fragmentation, make project information easier to understand and compare, and shorten the path from opportunity discovery to funding conversations.

By creating a first-of-its-kind marketplace for the sector, the platform introduces a more transparent, structured and searchable way to navigate infrastructure opportunities. Standardised project and profile formats reduce cognitive load, letting users compare opportunities, capabilities and mandates quickly — without interpreting inconsistent documents, fragmented data or unclear eligibility criteria.

It turns a fragmented ecosystem into a navigable market.

The marketplace connects project proponents, financiers and suppliers through consistent fields: clear readiness indicators, sector classifications, geography, financing needs and delivery capabilities.

That uniformity cuts the time wasted in early-stage discovery. Instead of starting every conversation from scratch, users understand fit faster, assess whether an opportunity matches their mandate, and move more confidently towards engagement.

At the heart of the platform is a matchmaking engine that helps users identify the most relevant projects, financiers and suppliers.

Project proponents find suitable capital and delivery partners faster. Financiers focus on opportunities that match their mandate. Suppliers identify projects where their capabilities are genuinely relevant. The result is a reduction in lead time to funding and partnership discussions, driven by transparency, clarity and better information architecture.

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