Financing Africa: Banks, Insurers and the New Geopolitics of Capital

Hello and welcome to the Political Risk Podcast, where geopolitics and insurance markets meet.

You're listening to a new special episode produced in association with Mosaic Insurance.

Our theme is Financing Africa, Banks, Insurers and the New Geopolitics of Capital.

I'm your host, David Bennion.

And to explore this subject, I'm joined by two expert guests.

Catherine Villers is Vice President, Political Risk Underwriter and Head of Commercial Finance at Mosaic.

And Nick James is Director of Structured Finance at ICBC Standard Bank.

Subsaharan African sovereigns operate within a far more complex financing landscape than they did a few decades ago.

After independence, many African countries lacked the domestic capital needed to finance their development and remained dependent on former colonial powers, international institutions and state-backed lending.

During the Cold War, finance became an explicit instrument of geopolitical influence.

while the decades that followed brought a greater role for multilateral institutions and lending tied to economic and governance reforms.

By the 2000s, the landscape had changed dramatically.

African sovereigns were increasingly gaining access to international bond markets and commercial finance, while new actors like China, Gulf investors, as well as commodity traders and regional development banks emerged as important sources of capital.

In this episode, we will examine how that financing system has evolved and where banks and political risk insurers fit within it today.

Okay, right, I really enjoyed recording this conversation, so let's dive straight into it.