How PIDG helped Nigerian companies raise $247 million locally

Nigerian companies looking to finance large projects have either had to raise capital abroad and absorb foreign exchange risk in a currency that moves against them or raise at home in a domestic capital market with traditionally little appetite for infrastructure.

The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) has spent two decades trying to widen that choice. A blended-finance institution funded by six governments alongside the International Finance Corporation (IFC), PIDG was established in 2002 to mobilise private capital into infrastructure across low-income and fragile markets. PIDG has been investing in Nigeria since 2004, operating through distinct divisions spanning project development, debt, and guarantees. 

Across its lifetime, PIDG has helped bring close to 300 projects to financial close, mobilising nearly $32 billion of private sector investment into projects collectively worth more than $50 billion. In 2025 alone, it committed $1 billion of its own capital into 33 projects worth $4.1 billion, with almost $3 billion of that coming from private investors.

In Nigeria, its most consequential intervention has been InfraCredit, the domestic credit enhancement institution PIDG helped create in partnership with the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority. 

An independent study by Steward Redqueen, a consultancy firm, published in August, found that 24 Nigerian companies have used InfraCredit guarantees to raise more than ₦327 billion from local capital markets, across sectors like transport, energy, manufacturing, and the Lekki Port and Lagos Free Zone. Pension funds, which were largely absent from Nigerian infrastructure financing before InfraCredit existed, now account for 56% of the value of those issuances.

In this conversation, Saeed Ibrahim, the director of sustainable impact, at…