Caisse de dépôt: A Key Lever to Finance Development in Africa

Africa faces a major financial challenge: to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and finance its demographic, ecological, and digital transitions, the continent must close a financing gap estimated at several hundred billion dollars per year. Public resources and official development aid will not be sufficient. The solution may lie in domestic private resources: Caisse de dépôt institutions, little-known yet strategic financial institutions, have the potential to mobilize local private savings—currently largely underutilized—to finance projects of public interest. Present in eleven African countries, they still struggle to fully play their role. How can they become an effective lever to transform national savings into a driver of development?