The World Bank Group says it mobilised a record $112 billion in private capital for developing economies in the 2026 financial year, more than three times the $35 billion recorded in 2022, according to a statement issued by the bank on Thursday, 17 September.
The lender said this was the most private capital it had drawn in a single year in its history, and that the figure, combined with its own financing, took total financing and mobilisation in developing economies to well above $200 billion during the year.
The rise did not happen in one leap. In an interview quoted by Reuters, World Bank Group President Ajay Banga put the FY26 total against $69 billion the previous year, meaning the sum attracted from private investors roughly tripled over four years rather than overnight.
The bank attributed the growth to reforms introduced over three years to make its operations faster and simpler and to bring its public and private arms closer together. Banga said the institution had changed how it works, “faster, simpler, and as one World Bank Group.”
Among the changes, the bank said it now assigns a single point of contact across its public and private sector work in each country, and develops an integrated strategy for each based on its needs. Banga said average project approval times had been cut from a year or more to about nine months, and shorter for simpler projects.
The gains were spread across income groups, according to the bank. Private capital mobilisation to lower middle income countries rose from $14 billion in FY22 to $37 billion in FY26, while upper middle income countries climbed from $12 billion to $50 billion.
For low income countries, however, the figure barely moved, remaining at about $3 billion. That flat line is significant, because these are the economies with the weakest access to commercial finance and the greatest reliance on official aid at a time when such aid is falling.
Africa recorded some of the strongest growth. The bank said mobilisation across the continent rose from about $9 billion in FY22 to $22 billion in FY26, an increase of nearly 150 per cent.
A large part of the effort has run through guarantees, which reduce the risk investors carry. The bank said it issued no fewer than $25 billion in guarantees during FY26, exceeding its own target of $20 billion, which it had set for 2030, four years ahead of schedule.
It said the growth was led by its Guarantee Platform, set up in 2024 to give clients and investors simpler access to guarantee products across the institution. The bank also said it was expanding local currency financing and working to address foreign exchange challenges, which have long deterred investors from developing markets.
The push is being driven by the scale of the jobs problem the bank has placed at the centre of its strategy. It said 1.2 billion young people in developing economies would reach working age over the next 10 to 15 years, while only about 420 million jobs were projected to be created over the same period.
The private sector already provides nine out of every 10 jobs in these economies, according to the bank. It said its jobs strategy focused on investing in human and physical infrastructure, creating business ready regulatory environments and helping firms scale.
The bank named five sectors it considers capable of generating investment and employment at scale: infrastructure and energy, agribusiness, healthcare, tourism, and value added manufacturing. It said 55 per cent of total financing in FY26, including its own account and mobilised capital, went to those five areas.
The bank also pointed to its originate to distribute initiative, which it said is designed to package and distribute investments to institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies and asset managers. Banga said the aim was to connect long term institutional capital, where the largest pools of money sit, with investment opportunities that individual projects rarely attract on their own.
The bank has set itself a further target of more than doubling private capital mobilisation to above $200 billion within two to three years, Banga said. That ambition rests on persuading global institutional investors, who have historically channelled only a small share of managed capital into developing economies, to commit at far greater volume.
Whether the momentum holds is not settled. The record was set in a single fiscal year and the bank’s own figures show private capital to the poorest countries has not grown, leaving open the question of whether the model can reach the economies that need it most rather than concentrating in middle income and better rated markets.
For Nigeria and its regional peers, the direction of these flows matters. Access to guaranteed, longer term and local currency financing bears directly on the funding available for power, transport and manufacturing projects that governments have struggled to finance from public revenue alone.