COMESA’s Record $65 Billion FDI Surge Cements Eastern and Southern Africa as the Continent’s Investment Powerhouse

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has emerged as the dominant force in African investment, capturing two-thirds of all foreign direct investment flowing into the continent amid what analysts describe as a remarkable defiance of global economic headwinds. The 21-member regional bloc, stretching from Tunisia in North Africa to Eswatini in the south, recorded a 154 per cent surge in FDI inflows in 2024, reaching an all-time high of $65 billion even as global FDI flows fell by 11 per cent during the same period.

Heba Salama, CEO of the COMESA Regional Investment Agency (RIA), presented these findings at the opening session of the second COMESA Investment Forum 2026, hosted in Nairobi under the patronage of Kenyan President William Ruto. The forum, organised by the RIA in collaboration with the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Trade, Investments, and Industry and Kenya Investment Authority (KenInvest), is part of a broader three-day investment conference that includes the Kenya International Investment Conference (KIICO) and the Africa Green Industrialization Initiative (AGII) Forum, targeting over $2 billion in new investment deals.

Drawing from the COMESA Investment Report 2025, produced jointly by the COMESA Regional Investment Agency and UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Salama outlined how the bloc’s share of global FDI has doubled from 2 per cent to 4 per cent, while its share of investment directed to developing economies rose from 3 per cent to 7 per cent. Today, COMESA accounts for roughly 67 per cent of total FDI inflows into Africa — a striking concentration that positions the region as the continent’s undisputed investment hub.

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Egypt’s Ras El Hekma Mega-Deal: The Engine Behind the Surge

The headline-grabbing 154 per cent increase was undeniably propelled by one of the largest foreign investment deals in African history: the Ras El Hekma development project in Egypt. In February 2024, Abu Dhabi-based sovereign investor ADQ signed a landmark $35 billion agreement with Egypt to acquire the development rights for the Ras El Hekma peninsula, a coastal region approximately 350 kilometres northwest of Cairo on the Mediterranean.

Under the deal, ADQ committed $24 billion for the development rights to transform the 170-million-square-metre site into a next-generation Mediterranean city featuring tourism amenities, a free zone, and a financial centre. An additional $11 billion in UAE deposits held at Egypt’s central bank were to be converted into Egyptian pounds for investment in prime projects across the country. The Egyptian government retained a 35 per cent stake in the project, which is expected to attract over $150 billion in investments over its lifetime and create an estimated 750,000 jobs.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly described it as one of the biggest deals of its kind, noting that the investment would help resolve the country’s hard currency crisis and stabilise the economy. The deal paved the way for an expanded $8 billion loan programme from the International Monetary Fund.

Yet the COMESA report makes clear that the investment story extends well beyond a single mega-project. Even excluding the Ras El Hekma deal, FDI inflows into the bloc would still have grown by 16 per cent, confirming what UNCTAD described as a region-wide improvement in investor sentiment. This underlying growth rate outpaced all other major regional economic communities on the continent: the Southern African Development Community (SADC) recorded 34 per cent FDI growth, while the East African Community (EAC) saw a more modest 12 per cent increase.

Project Finance and Greenfield Investment Hit New Heights

Beyond traditional FDI metrics, the report highlighted dramatic growth in international project finance (IPF) flows to the COMESA region. IPF nearly doubled to $79 billion in 2024, representing 80 per cent of Africa’s total project finance value. The sectors driving the strongest project finance performance were grid expansion, renewable energy, and major construction projects, with Egypt, Tunisia, Rwanda, and Malawi leading as primary beneficiaries.

Greenfield investment — the establishment of entirely new foreign business operations — remained robust as well. Announced greenfield projects reached $77 billion in 2024, marking the second-highest level in the bloc’s history. Notably, COMESA captured two-thirds of all greenfield investment value across the entire African continent, underscoring its outsized role in attracting new productive capital.

The scale of these figures becomes even more significant when placed in the broader African context. According to UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2025, total FDI into the African continent surged 75 per cent in 2024 to reach $97 billion, representing 6 per cent of global FDI. With COMESA alone absorbing $65 billion of that total, the bloc’s dominance over the continent’s investment landscape is unmistakable.

European and North American investors continue to hold the largest share of FDI stock in COMESA, led by the Netherlands and the United States. According to the US Trade Representative, American FDI stock in COMESA reached $20.2 billion in 2022, a 6.6 per cent increase from the previous year, while COMESA’s own investment in the United States stood at $5.2 billion.

Sectoral Shifts: Construction Booms, Renewables Rise, but Gaps Persist

The sectoral composition of FDI flowing into COMESA underwent significant shifts in 2024, reflecting both new opportunities and persistent vulnerabilities.

The most dramatic change occurred in construction, where investment surged nearly fivefold to $24 billion, driven overwhelmingly by activity in Egypt, including the Ras El Hekma development and other urban infrastructure projects. Basic metals investment also performed strongly, rising by 75 per cent, reflecting robust demand from manufacturing and infrastructure development across the region.

The energy and gas supply sector recorded a 22 per cent increase and retained its position as the top FDI recipient within COMESA, underscoring the critical importance of power generation and distribution to the region’s economic ambitions. This growth comes against a backdrop of significant energy access challenges: only about 48 per cent of COMESA’s population has access to electricity, a figure that drops to just 26 per cent in rural areas.

Investment in sectors linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) produced a decidedly mixed picture. Renewable energy investment soared by 67 per cent, reinforcing COMESA’s emergence as a hub for energy transition projects. Health and education investments jumped 130 per cent, suggesting growing recognition of social infrastructure’s role in long-term development — though analysts note this surge came from a low base.

However, critical gaps remain in sectors fundamental to sustainable development. Agrifood systems saw investment fall by 34 per cent, a concerning trend for a region where agriculture underpins the livelihoods of millions. Water and sanitation investment collapsed by 76 per cent, and transport infrastructure investment declined by 54 per cent — a paradox, given the broader global increase in transport financing during the same period. These shortfalls point to a growing misalignment between the type of investment flowing into the region and the development needs of its population.

Meanwhile, technology-related capital flows showed notable volatility. FDI into extractive industries fell by 61 per cent after two consecutively strong years, while information and communication technology (ICT) investment dropped by 55 per cent following an exceptional peak in 2023.

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The Concentration Challenge: Five Countries Absorb 90 Per Cent of Inflows

Despite the headline-grabbing figures, the COMESA investment story is not without significant structural concerns. Chief among them is the extreme geographic concentration of FDI. In 2024, just five countries — Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya — accounted for 90 per cent of total inflows, up from 80 per cent the previous year.

Egypt alone absorbed the vast majority of this investment, powered by the Ras El Hekma deal and the country’s aggressive efforts to attract Gulf capital. Ethiopia, the bloc’s second-largest recipient, has leveraged its emphasis on manufacturing and industrial parks to draw approximately $3.2 billion in recent years. Uganda’s growing oil and gas sector, particularly the development of the Lake Albert oil project, has made it a magnet for extractive industry investment. The DRC’s position as a critical supplier of minerals for global technology and electric vehicle supply chains continues to attract significant foreign capital, while Kenya benefits from a diversified economy spanning technology, financial services, and renewable energy.

The remaining 16 COMESA member states — including Djibouti, Comoros, Eritrea, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Eswatini, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Libya, Somalia, and Tunisia — collectively share just 10 per cent of inflows. This level of concentration raises fundamental questions about whether COMESA’s investment boom is translating into the kind of inclusive, broad-based development that the bloc was designed to promote.

Intra-Regional Investment: COMESA’s Weakest Link

Perhaps the most telling indicator of COMESA’s integration challenges is the persistently low level of cross-border investment within the bloc itself. Only 3 per cent of announced greenfield projects by volume and 6 per cent by value originated from within COMESA during the 2020–2024 period. This is well below the African average of 7 per cent for project count and 14 per cent for value, highlighting what the UNCTAD report described as an investment landscape “overwhelmingly dominated by extra-regional capital.”

As the Zawya-published analysis of the report noted, COMESA’s intra-bloc investment is among the lowest of Africa’s regional economic communities over the past five years. This limited regional capital mobility contrasts sharply with the more dynamic intra-regional patterns observed in blocs like the East African Community, where Kenyan, South African, and Nigerian firms have expanded aggressively into neighbouring markets.

The UNCTAD report warned that “without wider country participation, COMESA’s investment expansion may not translate into broad-based development gains.” It recommended targeted policy measures to unlock the potential of small and medium-sized enterprises, which often expand first into neighbouring markets before venturing globally, making them natural drivers of intraregional integration.

Strategic Priorities: From Investment Surge to Sustainable Growth

Salama used the Nairobi forum to outline a forward-looking agenda designed to convert the FDI surge into lasting economic transformation. Her strategic priorities centred on five pillars: strengthening productive sectors and value-added manufacturing, expanding digital infrastructure across the region, investing heavily in education, skills development, and healthcare, and improving policy and data frameworks to provide investors with the clarity, stability, and predictability needed for long-term commitments.

The emphasis on digital infrastructure responds to a growing concern flagged in the UNCTAD report: the sharp 55 per cent decline in ICT-related FDI following 2023’s exceptional peak. As UNCTAD’s broader World Investment Report 2025 noted, FDI in the digital economy grew 14 per cent globally in 2024, but this growth remained heavily concentrated, with ten countries accounting for 80 per cent of all new digital projects. Ensuring COMESA member states can compete for a share of this digital investment wave will require significant upgrades to regional connectivity, regulatory harmonisation, and skills development.

The call for value-added manufacturing reflects a long-standing African ambition to move beyond raw commodity exports. While countries like the DRC, Uganda, and Ethiopia continue to attract extractive-industry investment, the real developmental prize lies in downstream beneficiation — turning raw materials into finished goods on home soil. COMESA’s free trade area, which now includes most of its 21 members, provides a framework for enabling this shift, but translating trade agreements into actual industrial capacity remains a formidable challenge.

The forum itself, bringing together policymakers, leading investors, investment promotion agencies, and financiers, was designed as a business-to-business and government-to-business platform to facilitate the kind of direct deal-making and barrier-removal that can turn investment intentions into productive capital deployment.

A Continent Rising — But Unevenly

Salama’s assertion at the Nairobi forum that “Africa is not a risky destination — Africa is rising” captures the optimism surrounding COMESA’s investment trajectory. The numbers lend credibility to the claim: a 154 per cent FDI surge, a doubling of global investment share, and record levels of project finance and greenfield investment.

But the data also reveals a more complex reality. The concentration of inflows in a handful of countries, the weakness of intra-regional investment, and the sharp declines in funding for critical sectors like water, sanitation, agriculture, and transport infrastructure all suggest that the investment surge has not yet evolved into the kind of broad-based economic transformation that COMESA’s 640 million citizens need.

The path from record FDI to inclusive prosperity is neither automatic nor guaranteed. It requires deliberate policy interventions to spread investment beyond the dominant five economies, deepen regional economic integration, and channel capital toward the sectors that underpin long-term sustainable development. As UNCTAD’s Richard Bolwijn noted when the report was first launched in Lusaka, COMESA delivered an exceptional year of record growth despite global headwinds. The question now is whether the bloc can sustain and distribute that momentum in the years ahead — transforming what Salama described as Africa’s potential into tangible, widespread economic growth.

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Photo Source: Google

By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

18th March, 2026