It was working as the International Finance Corporation’s representative in Senegal’s capital, Dakar that gave Faheen Allibhoy, head of JPMorgan’s newly established Development Finance Institution (DFI), a sense of the potential assistance that the private sector could offer in driving economic growth.
She saw that development dollars alone could not help Senegal exit the trap of mediocre growth and high poverty, nor help its government leverage the discovery of oil in 2014; its ticket to prosperity. It needed substantially more cash.
The World Bank is one of Senegal’s largest donors – extending $365 million in 2019 and $715 million in 2020 – but the amount of official development assistance (ODA) it gave the country “pales in comparison” to what Senegal was able to raise in the markets, Allibhoy says.
“The annual budget support provided by World Bank and other donors, which is attractive because it is concessional in nature, is relatively limited vis-à-vis the needs of the government.
“But
