Source: African Development Bank Group
The African Development Bank Group convened a regional seminar and national dialogue in Tunis on 30 June, aiming to mobilise large-scale development financing for North Africa and also attract investors to Tunisia’s funding priorities.
The seminar and dialogue built on the central theme of the Bank Group’s 2026 Annual Meetings, held in May in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, “Mobilising Africa’s Development Financing at Scale in a Fragmented World.”
Against an international backdrop of tighter financing conditions, dwindling concessional resources, a fragmenting global economy, and persistently high capital costs, resource mobilisation has become a strategic lever for countries in the region to take greater ownership of their development trajectories.
“The transformations under way in the global economy call for new approaches to support the development financing ambitions of North African countries,” said Mohamed El Azizi, Director General of the African Development Bank for North Africa.
Participants stressed that North Africa’s financing challenge lies not only in the availability of capital, but in the capacity to channel it towards productive investment. The region holds significant assets: substantial domestic savings, a growing base of institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, a dynamic private sector, an active diaspora, and a geostrategic position linking Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Yet, these resources remain under-deployed, held back by weak financial intermediation, shallow capital markets, and a limited supply of long-term financing instruments.
At the national dialogue on Tunisia’s financing priorities, participants from public institutions, technical and financial partners, the private sector, and civil society examined the challenges through three complementary levers.
The first is domestic revenue mobilisation – rationalising tax expenditures, gradually broadening the tax base, and digitally modernising public administration. The second is private capital mobilisation and innovative financing, achieved by strengthening public-private partnerships and blended finance, and by better channelling diaspora remittances, which central bank data show totalled approximately $2.96 billion in 2025, equivalent to around 6.5 percent of GDP. The third is strengthening the financial architecture through capital market development, deeper green and Islamic finance, and greater mobilisation of institutional investors.
“Sharing best practices and strengthening regional cooperation are essential levers for sustainably increasing the mobilisation of domestic and international resources, accelerating the structural transformation of economies, and building a development model that is more resilient, more inclusive, and increasingly driven by North Africa’s own resources,” said Malinne Blomberg, Deputy Director General of the African Development Bank Group for North Africa and Country Manager for Tunisia.
Closing the discussions, the African Development Bank reaffirmed its commitment to supporting its regional member countries’ resource mobilisation efforts through financing operations, sharing comparative experiences, generating knowledge, and deploying innovative financial instruments tailored to national and regional priorities.