The Room Where Africa’s Infrastructure Deals Get Made
Ask almost anyone who finances African infrastructure what holds new city projects back, and the answer is rarely a shortage of capital.
It’s the distance between a masterplan and something an investor can actually finance.
That gap is known as Phase Zero: the feasibility studies, impact assessments, and legal structuring that typically cost 1% to 5% of a project’s total cost, and that governments and developers routinely underfund.
Skip it, and even a well-intentioned city stalls long before anyone looks at a term sheet.
The New Cities Summit is built to help close Phase Zero and break the impasse that stalls projects.
This December, in its third edition after Kigali in 2023 and Nairobi in 2025, the Summit puts developers, investors and government officials in the same room, inside award-winning Waterfall City in Johannesburg.
This is Africa’s only event built around that specific combination of developers, investors, and government, working to get African urban projects out of the planning stage and into the ground.
Built into the Summit is the Cities Investment Forum, where a selected group of African city projects pitch directly to investors.
It’s run by the Charter Cities Institute and Mineral Springs, an infrastructure advisory firm that assesses each project and helps its team close the gaps before December.
That preparation is Phase Zero work, done before the pitch instead of left for the investor to untangle.
Mineral Springs has already helped move more than $10.4 billion of infrastructure capital.
Past participants have included Itana, Fumba Town, Small Farm Cities, and Kigali Innovation City, and over a dozen others from across the continent.
The room already includes Willie Vos, the CEO of Waterfall City; David Pilling, the Financial Times’ Africa editor; and Mohan Vivekanandan, a member of DBSA’s Group Executive Committee and Chairman of its Infrastructure Specialist Group.
The World Bank, the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency are all sending senior people too, along with hundreds more of the same calibre, and other founders, builders, investors, government representatives, and others who can – and will – make deals.
Whether you’re deploying capital on behalf of an institution or looking for the next place to put your own, this is where Africa’s next cities get decided.
The New Cities Summit runs 7–8 December 2026, in Waterfall City, Johannesburg.
Comments