Shelter Afrique repays $186 million debt, targets regional bonds
Wednesday September 22 2021
Shelter Afrique CEO Andrew Chimphondah. PHOTO | POOL
Pan-African housing development financier Shelter Afrique has repaid $186 million commercial debt owed to eight lenders, giving the company the leverage to underwrite new debt worth $465 million.
The lenders include the African Development Bank, Agence Française de Developpement, Commercial Bank of Africa, European Investment Bank, German KFW, Ghana International Bank, CFA-Banque Ouest Africaine de Development, and Islamic Corporation for Development.
The company has also repaid a bond floated on the Nairobi Stock Exchange between 2013 and 2018, thereby enabling it to return to the capital market to raise Ksh125 billion ($1.1 billion) in local currency bonds by the end of the year.
“With the debts fully retired, we now intend to mobilise a local-currency equivalent of $500 million each from Nigeria and East Africa, as well as $250 million from French-speaking African nations. These will be crucial in funding our demand-side pipeline of as much as $1 billion which we are currently developing,” said Shelter Afrique Group Managing Director and CEO Andrew Chimphondah.