British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor, launched its 2026 –31 strategy in Kenya on 2 November. Under the strategy, BII aims to drive about $6.7 billion of its own capital and mobilise up to $5.3 billion in private capital to invest across Africa.
The new strategy builds on the $1.2 billion BII committed across East Africa during its previous five-year strategy. In Kenya, it will mean combining investment in businesses and infrastructure with a greater focus on attracting additional institutional capital and creating the conditions for more investment to flow. BII plans to work closely with local partners to develop markets, strengthen financial systems and address barriers that prevent capital from reaching productive businesses and infrastructure.
BII CEO Leslie Maasdorp is visiting Kenya to launch the strategy and convene investors and other stakeholders to explore new partnerships. He said the strategy is about doing more than investing BII’s own capital, using its capital, experience and partnerships to unlock investment from others and help build markets that can attract capital at greater scale. Kenya, he said, has a significant pool of domestic capital, and BII is “calling on local capital providers to partner with us” to channel more of it into productive businesses and infrastructure.
Reflecting this focus, Maasdorp convened a roundtable, Progressive Capital Partnerships: New Models for Unlocking Local Capital, bringing together key stakeholders to explore practical ways to channel more of Kenya’s domestic institutional capital into the country’s growth and development.
Kenya’s pension assets reached KSh3.167 trillion in June 2026, yet just 0.02 per cent was allocated to infrastructure debt instruments and 0.62 per cent to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The roundtable focused on approaches that could unlock more of this capital, including local-currency financing, blended finance, risk-sharing mechanisms and capital-market instruments to help manage risk and crowd in private capital.
BII sees Kenya’s established financial sector and active capital markets as positioning it as an important investment hub for East Africa, where economic growth is projected at around 6 per cent in 2026–27. BII will seek to build on these strengths to support investment in Kenya and explore how successful approaches can be applied across the wider region, including in frontier markets such as Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania, which are identified by the UN as Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
BII is also convening its 2026 Innovation for Impact Summit, now in its fourth edition. The event will bring together venture capital investors, fund managers and entrepreneurs from Africa and South Asia to exchange cross-market experience, explore cross-border investment opportunities and consider how venture capital can support the growth of thriving businesses.
The summit will also explore venture capital coordination between Africa and South Asia, the future of artificial intelligence and responsible innovation, capital mobilisation and the evolving investor landscape, and climate innovation and emerging investment opportunities across both regions.