CAPE TOWN, South Africa, March 13, 2026/APO Group/ –Across power and water, there is no shortage of announcements, memoranda and pipeline lists. Yet investors, DFIs and lenders repeatedly describe the same frustration: a large share of project opportunities arrive too early, too thin or too ambiguously structured to move through real due diligence. Developers, in turn, often face a different reality: they are trying to progress projects inside complex permitting environments, uncertain offtake frameworks, misaligned stakeholder expectations and a grid that may not be ready when the project is.

The gap is not ambition. The gap is bankability and decision velocity.

Where deals stall in practice

Most projects do not fail because the technology is unproven. They stall because the fundamentals are not yet ready for capital. In practical terms, the friction points tend to cluster around:

• Revenue certainty: offtake, tariff realism, creditworthiness and enforcement
• Grid access: connection capacity, timelines and the transmission build-out required to make delivery feasible
• Permitting and land: predictable sequencing, timeframes and stakeholder alignment
• Risk allocation: clarity on what sits with the developer, the offtaker, the state and the financiers
• Project preparation maturity: data room readiness, governance, delivery capability and credible timelines
• Country and currency risk: the real cost of hedging, indexation and macro volatility

 

Africa does not lack projects. It lacks projects that are investable at speed.

 

What changes when you engineer the conversation

This is the logic behind the Project & Investment Network (P&IN) (https://apo-opa.co/4lo8Sha) at Enlit Africa: to create structured, decision-oriented engagements that help shorten the path from early interest to investable next steps.

In practice, that means designing a deal-making environment around mechanisms rather than marketing. The aim is not to create a “conference meeting calendar”. The aim is to reduce friction and increase the quality of conversations, by ensuring that the right people are in the room with the right level of information and the right intent.

 

P&IN is built around:

• Structured matchmaking based on investor mandates and project characteristics, not general networking – the business breakfast on 19th May will provide insights into small structural or programmatic shifts and how they can exponentially change focus, delivery and outcomes. Join Bruce Whitfield, award-winning business journalist and best-selling author as we explore the business landscape for power infrastructure.
• Targeted project briefings that focus on mitigating delivery constraints and risk allocation and realistic readiness milestones
• Curated discussions with decision-makers from utilities, government and finance to pressure-test what is required to move projects forward
• A practical emphasis on what happens next: defining the immediate milestones that shift a project towards bankability

Why this matters now

Africa’s infrastructure constraints are now delivery constraints. Grid expansion, reliability and industrial growth cannot wait for perfect conditions. Yet capital will only move at scale when opportunities are structured, risks are priced and delivery capability is evident.

 

P&IN exists to help close that gap by turning project intent into investable conversations and investable conversations into disciplined next steps.

 

Call to action:

For developers: Apply to present your project (https://apo-opa.co/40tikq6) to investors and DFIs through P&IN
For investors and DFIs: Request the investor pack and participation criteria
For utility and public sector leaders: Participate in decision-focused dialogues (https://apo-opa.co/4deEeEY) on delivery constraints and investment readiness

 

Register: https://apo-opa.co/4rzRWWx

• In 2024, the Coca-Cola system in South Africa contributed R51.2 billion in value-added economic impact across its value chain.
• The Coca-Cola system and its value chain supported over 87,000 direct and indirect jobs in South Africa in sectors including retail, agriculture, manufacturing, transport and services.
• The Coca-Cola system purchased R25.6 billion worth of goods and services from suppliers in South Africa in 2024, strengthening the country’s industries and communities.

 

The Coca-Cola (www.Coca-ColaCompany.com) system in South Africa today announced the results of a comprehensive socio-economic impact study, conducted by global consulting firm Steward Redqueen.

Download Infographic: https://apo-opa.co/4bpsbn2

“This new independent study highlights the scale of the Coca-Cola system’s contribution to South Africa’s economy, employment, and communities,” said Luis Felipe Avellar, president of the Africa operating unit of The Coca‑Cola Company. He spoke during a media briefing hosted by the Honourable Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition, Mr. Parks Tau, ahead of the 2026 South Africa Investment Conference, where the Coca-Cola system will participate as a sponsor.

The study reveals that the Coca-Cola system in South Africa – comprising Coca-Cola and its authorized bottlers – alongside a broad network of local suppliers, distributors, and retailers, contributed R51.2 billion in value-added economic activity in 2024.

Through its value chain, the Coca-Cola system supported over 87,000 jobs through suppliers, partners, and customers. This means that for every direct job created by the system, 10 more jobs were supported across South Africa’s economy.

“Our business is interconnected with local communities, we hire locally, produce locally, distribute locally and, where possible, source locally, helping to build a stronger, more integrated economy in South Africa,” Avellar said.

Charl Goncalves, Managing Director of Coca-Cola Peninsula Beverages, emphasized the system’s focus on partnerships: “We remain committed to creating opportunity for our people, our partners, and the communities we serve.”

The study also highlights the Coca-Cola system’s strong local integration, with R25.6 billion worth of goods and services sourced from suppliers in South Africa in 2024. This local procurement supports industries as diverse as sugar production, packaging, transportation, and marketing, reinforcing the Coca-Cola system’s role as a partner for growth in South Africa’s economic development.

“South Africa remains one of our most strategic markets in Africa—the beginning of a legacy that dates back to Coca-Cola’s first entry on the continent in 1928. These findings reaffirm the Coca-Cola system’s role as a key driver of shared value and sustainable growth within the South African economy,” said Sunil Gupta, CEO, Coca-Cola Beverages Africa.

The Coca-Cola system has strengthened its footprint in South Africa through sustained investment and innovation, including the launch of a new bottling line at CCBSA’s manufacturing facility in Midrand.  This investment highlights the system’s commitment to investing, producing, and distributing locally, while contributing to South Africa’s social and economic development.

The Coca-Cola system’s contribution extends beyond economic impact. South Africa is one of the beneficiaries of the Africa Water Stewardship Initiative (https://apo-opa.co/4bFqSiD), a nearly $25 million investment through 2030 to help address critical water-related challenges in local communities in 20 African countries.

The study conducted by Steward Redqueen measured the direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts of the Coca-Cola system in South Africa, combining company operational data with trusted third-party economic sources. The analysis demonstrates how Coca-Cola’s local operations ripple across the economy – from farmers growing sugarcane to retailers selling beverages – creating jobs, generating income, and building opportunities.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, March 23, 2026/APO Group/ —By João Gaspar Marques — Executive Director, Strategic Advisory, APO Group (https://APO-opa.com).

There is a cost that does not appear on any balance sheet and yet is one of the most consequential expenses a company operating in Africa will incur. I call it the Perception Tax: the financial and strategic penalty paid by organisations that price African markets on the basis of assumption rather than intelligence.

It is, in every meaningful sense, a tax on ignorance. And unlike most taxes, it is entirely avoidable.

The Mechanism

The perception tax operates through a simple but destructive logic. In the absence of credible, granular market intelligence, decision-makers default to the available narrative – and the available narrative on Africa is often wrong in its generalisations. It is a painfully outdated tragedy that the continent continues to be treated as a unified landscape of risk, rather than 54 distinct nations with their own regulatory frameworks, political cultures, growth trajectories, and investment dynamics. The macro obscures the micro, and the micro is where the opportunity lives.

Consider the geography of it. Investing in France is different from investing in Finland. The US is not Mexico. So why would Benin and Botswana, as far apart physically, politically, economically, and culturally as Belgium is from Belarus, be perceived under the same optics? Yet, again and again, that is precisely what we see in investment discussions from London to New York.

The consequences of this tax are very real. The cost of access to capital rises for projects that do not warrant a premium. Decisions are delayed while companies wait for clarity that a generalistic analysis cannot provide. First-mover advantage, objectively the most sought-after edge in developing economies, is being blindly surrendered to competitors with better intelligence and market understanding. For companies with significant African exposure or ambitions, the perception tax is a structural drag on performance and profit.

Reading the Numbers

In February 2025, the African Development Bank commissioned Moody’s Analytics to assess fourteen years of infrastructure investment performance across regions. Africa’s rate of loss stood at 1.7%, the lowest in the world. Latin America registered approximately 13%. Eastern Europe, 10%. By any objective measure, Africa is among the most reliable destinations for infrastructure investment on the planet.

Yet the cost of capital across African markets remains three to four times higher than in comparable regions. Investors are demanding a premium that the facts on the ground do not justify, and the assets they pass on are being acquired by those who read about the numbers rather than the headlines.

Tony Elumelu, whose investment portfolio spans power, financial services, and healthcare across four continents, puts it plainly: “There’s nowhere else we get the kind of returns on investments as what we make in Africa.” The competitive advantage belongs to those who see opportunity where others see risk.

What It Looks Like in Practice

A developer assessing a project in East Africa sees currency volatility, a complex political transition, and a regulatory environment difficult to understand at first. The standard response is to demand a higher return, shorten financing tenors, or cancel the decision entirely. Less competitive, slower, potentially deal-killing. A competitor with on-the-ground intelligence reads the same market differently. That country has maintained institutional continuity across successive governments. The local partner has a strong operational track record. Local financing partners are prepared to co-invest. The project proceeds on better terms, ahead of the market. The perception tax has been paid, by the first company, to the second.

This is not hypothetical. Helios Investment Partners, one of Africa’s most successful private equity funds, built a portfolio exceeding $3 billion by entering markets the global consensus had written off as too risky, reading them instead for what they actually were. Kenya illustrates what happens when this information gap closes. Five years of regulatory reform moved the country 52 positions up the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index. Foreign investment followed, consistently and at scale. The risk did not disappear. It was understood.

This pattern repeats across the continent. Markets once characterised as high-risk by international capital are, on closer inspection, simply markets that had not yet been properly read. The investors who looked carefully enough to see the difference captured returns that reflected the advantage of having done so. Those who were hesitant arrived later, at higher valuations, paying the perception tax in full.

The Broader Implication

The perception tax compounds. Delayed investment means delayed market development, which reinforces the perception of unreadiness, which delays further investment. The gap between Africa’s perceived risk profile and its actual commercial fundamentals does not close on its own. It closes when enough informed capital enters a market to shift the consensus, which is precisely when the opportunity for asymmetric returns begins to narrow.

The African Continental Free Trade Area represents a $3.4 trillion market with a population approaching 1.5 billion people. The continent holds the critical minerals on which the global energy transition depends. The question is not whether capital will eventually flow toward these opportunities. It will. The question is who will have established a position before generalised knowledge eclipses profit opportunity.

A Different Approach

The companies that consistently outperform in Africa share a common characteristic: they treat market intelligence as a primary investment, not a nice-to-have. They distinguish between structural risk, which must be priced, and noise, which must be filtered. They understand that the information gap between perception and reality is not a permanent feature of African markets. It is a temporary condition which will reward those who close it first. Closing that gap is precisely why we designed APO Group’s advisory practice.

The perception tax is also the perception premium. The same asymmetry that penalises the ill-informed rewards the well-informed. For the investor or corporate decision-maker prepared to engage with local markets at the level of detail that strategic decisions require, Africa offers something increasingly rare in global markets: a genuine informational edge.

The opportunity was always there. The edge belongs to those who are bothered to look.