BusinessDay reported a $2 trillion estimate for African pension funds, above the Africa Finance Corporation’s incomplete 2025 pension-only figure, leaving the scale of the continent’s retirement assets uncertain.
On Nov. 8, BusinessDay reported that former Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines said at a CANEX WKND 2026 panel that African pension funds exceed $2 trillion, with less than 1% invested in Africa. The event page lists Lagos as the venue from Nov. 5-8. The African Union (AU) said Nigeria hosted the event and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) organized it.
The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) estimated African pension assets at $455.8 billion in its 2025 infrastructure report, using 2024 figures where available and the latest reported year for other countries. It left out Algeria, Ethiopia, Libya and Sudan because of limited data, and said the actual total may be higher.
The AFC figure is far below the amount BusinessDay attributed to Gonsalves, but the estimates do not cover the same scope or necessarily the same years. The 2025 calculation omits countries, while BusinessDay did not specify the period or method behind the $2 trillion claim.
In its 2026 summary, the AFC described a continent-wide pool of capital exceeding $4 trillion; it grouped life assets with pensions in a category topping $1 trillion. The summary provides no pension-only subtotal, so that broader amount cannot establish the size of pension assets by itself.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gives a separate measure: Africa accounted for less than 1% of pension assets worldwide in 2023. That tracks the continent’s portion of the global total, not the share of African retirement funds invested within Africa. At the end of 2022, overseas investments represented 62% of pension assets in Botswana and 31.3% in Mauritius, according to OECD figures; those country data do not establish a continental rate.
The AFC says pension and insurance portfolios commonly include government securities, term deposits and listed equities. It links limited investment in infrastructure and other long-term assets to high yields on government debt, regulatory limits, too few investable projects and gaps in investment expertise.
The corporation argues that mobilizing domestic savings could help finance infrastructure and industrial development. Its historical examples span Europe and North America as well as postwar East and Southeast Asia, where it says financial institutions helped channel savings into economic change.
