Dahlia Khalifa is the Regional Director for Central Africa and Nigeria at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In this role, she leads IFC’s investment and advisory teams across the portfolio spanning energy, agribusiness, manufacturing and finance, while supporting private-sector growth and job creation. In this interview with The Guardian, Khalifa speaks on how private-sector-led solutions are translating economic reforms into productivity, jobs and opportunities.

From your perspective, how is improved power reliability changing productivity and competitiveness for SMEs and industrial players and where do you see the biggest near-term economic gains?
Across the World Bank Group, job creation has become the central organising principle of development. Over the next decade, more than 1.2 billion young people in developing countries will reach working age. In Africa alone, up to 12 million young people enter the labour market every year, while only about three million formal jobs are created. Closing this gap is not about multiplying projects. It is about fixing systems that allow businesses to become productive, competitive, and capable of hiring at scale.

From a regional perspective, infrastructure, particularly electricity, is one of the most decisive of those systems. Across Nigeria and Central Africa, unreliable power remains one of the most binding constraints on productivity. For SMEs and industrial players, electricity reliability determines whether firms can operate consistently, control costs, invest, and grow. When power is unreliable, businesses remain small and informal. When it becomes reliable, productivity rises and employment follows.

This is why energy access sits at the core of Mission 300, the World Bank Group’s commitment to connect 300 million people to electricity by 2030. Mission 300 is not a single treaty or compact signed by all countries; it provides a common framework through which countries engage based on their reform readiness and implementation pathways.

Nigeria endorsed and is advancing Mission 300 objectives through the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) programme, which focuses on expanding mini-grids and solar home systems to underserved communities and businesses. DARES is supported by the World Bank, with IFC playing a complementary role by mobilising private capital and supporting private-sector delivery models.

In practical terms, this means Nigeria is participating in Mission 300 as a priority implementation country, translating the platform’s objectives into concrete delivery—bringing reliable, affordable electricity to households, SMEs and local industries in ways that support productivity and job creation. Under DARES, IFC-backed mini-grid solutions are directly addressing the productivity bottleneck faced by local businesses.

Through IFC’s investment in Husk Power Systems, more than 100 mini-grid sites are being deployed across Northern Nigeria, delivering clean and reliable electricity to underserved communities. These mini grids are creating nearly 29,000 new connections and benefiting around 115,000 people and businesses. By replacing diesel generation, they reduce energy costs by roughly 25 per cent, freeing up resources for SMEs to operate longer hours, improve margins, and reinvest in growth.

This effort is complemented by IFC’s investment in Sun King, which is scaling pay-as-you-go solar solutions nationwide. By expanding access to affordable, predictable electricity for households and micro-enterprises, Sun King supports small-scale commerce, digital connectivity, refrigeration, and home-based businesses, critical building blocks of local economic activity.

Nigeria matters because of scale. The same energy constraints faced by Nigerian firms exist across Central Africa, albeit in smaller markets. What Nigeria demonstrates is that private-led energy solutions, when properly structured and aligned with public-sector reform, can deliver productivity gains that are both commercially viable and replicable across the region. In the near term, the strongest economic gains would materialise in agro-processing, light manufacturing, and trade-linked services, where electricity reliability translates most directly into output, competitiveness, and jobs.

Initiatives such as AgriConnect are designed to strengthen agricultural value chains. How are these interventions translating into tangible job creation, higher incomes and improved food security, particularly in rural communities?
If energy enables productivity, agriculture determines whether that productivity translates into jobs at scale, especially for young people and rural communities.

Globally, the challenge is clear. Food production must increase by at least 60 per cent by 2050 to meet rising demand, even as more than 295 million people already face high levels of food insecurity. Africa sits at the centre of this equation. The continent holds around 60 per cent of the world’s unused arable land, yet much of its agricultural employment remains low-productivity and vulnerable.

From a regional perspective, this is not a failure of effort, but of structure. Agriculture creates jobs only when it is connected to processing, logistics, finance, and markets. Without those links, farming remains subsistence-based and unable to absorb the millions of young people entering the workforce each year.

In Nigeria, IFC’s approach has therefore focused on strengthening agricultural value chains rather than isolated production. Investments in domestic processing and inputs illustrate this logic. IFC’s support for companies such as Johnvents Industries is expanding local cocoa processing capacity, improving market access for smallholder farmers, and creating employment beyond the farm gates, in processing, logistics, quality control, and transport.

Similarly, IFC’s engagement in fertiliser production through Dangote Fertiliser, Robust International and Indorama reflects the same systems approach. These investments generate large-scale industrial jobs while improving access to inputs that raise farm productivity and incomes. When productivity rises at the farm level, food security improves; when processing and logistics expand, employment scales.

Looking ahead, AgriConnect will deepen and systematise this approach. The initiative is designed to link farms, firms, and finances so that agriculture becomes a modern, commercially viable engine for jobs rather than a high-risk livelihood. In Nigeria, AgriConnect will build on existing value-chain investments to strengthen logistics, SME capability and access to finance, with a clear focus on job creation and income growth.

Nigeria’s experience is highly relevant for Central Africa, where agriculture employs the majority of the population, but value chains remain fragmented. The aim is not only to produce more food, but to transform agriculture into a source of dignified, resilient livelihoods.

As Nigeria pushes to crowd in private investment, what signals are global and regional investors paying the closest attention to, and how are tools like guarantees, risk-sharing mechanisms and capital market reforms helping to unlock long-term capital?
Mobilising private capital at scale is the third pillar of the World Bank Group’s jobs agenda. Infrastructure and reform create the conditions for growth, but without long-term private investment, that growth cannot translate into employment at the scale Africa requires. Investors are fundamentally looking for credibility: macroeconomic stability, policy consistency, and the ability to execute reforms. In Nigeria, recent progress on foreign-exchange management and fiscal reform has begun to rebuild confidence, particularly among long-term investors.

But confidence alone does not mobilise capital. The challenge is converting reform momentum into investable opportunities that can absorb large volumes of long-term finance. This shift is central to IFC’s 2030 strategy, which focuses on mobilising private capital at scale so that reform momentum translates into sustained investment and job creation. In practice, this means moving beyond one-off transactions toward guarantees, risk-sharing mechanisms, and capital-market solutions that reduce risk, extend maturities, and align financing with the real investment horizons of businesses.

Capital-market platforms such as InfraCredit illustrate this approach. By enabling pension funds and insurers to invest in local-currency infrastructure bonds, IFC helps unlock domestic long-term capital for sectors that underpin productivity and employment. Across Central Africa, the same logic applies, combining finance with advisory support to strengthen SME governance and investment readiness ensures that capital reaches firms that can scale and hire. In more fragile contexts, digital finance plays a similar catalytic role, expanding access to financial tools for women- and youth-led enterprises. Across markets, the objective is consistent, mobilising private capital not as an end in itself, but as a system that supports real businesses, real jobs, and long-term resilience.

Nigeria’s ongoing economic and sectoral reforms often set the tone for neighbouring markets. How are these changes influencing investment flows, policy choices, and market integration across West and Central Africa?
Nigeria’s reforms matter beyond its borders because of scale. As Africa’s largest economy, changes in Nigeria influence investor perceptions, policy choices and capital flows across West and Central Africa.

Since mid-2023, Nigeria has undertaken significant reforms, including the removal of fuel subsidies and the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market. These measures have contributed to a sharp recovery in investor confidence, with capital importation rising strongly year on year.

From a regional perspective, Nigeria increasingly acts as a reference market. When reforms are implemented at scale in a complex environment, they demonstrate what is possible elsewhere. This role is reflected in IFC’s sustained investment presence in Nigeria across energy, agribusiness, manufacturing, digital infrastructure, and financial markets—sectors that are central to productivity and job creation.

Recent investments illustrate this dynamic. In energy, IFC’s support for distributed renewable solutions through Husk Power Systems and Sun King shows how private-sector models can deliver reliable power to businesses and households. In agriculture, investments in Johnvents Industries and Robust International demonstrate how strengthening processing, aggregation, and logistics can raise productivity and create employment along value chains.

In financial markets, IFC’s long-standing support for domestic capital mobilisation through InfraCredit has helped channel long-term local capital into infrastructure.

This influence is also visible through Nigerian firms expanding regionally, particularly in digital finance and payments. These platforms support cross-border trade, SME growth, and employment, while strengthening market integration across West and Central Africa.

When sustained, Nigeria’s reform momentum creates multiplier effects that extend well beyond national borders, accelerating private-sector-led growth and regional integration.

The World Bank Group has emphasised stronger coordination across its institutions. What does this more integrated approach mean in practical terms for private-sector development and sustainable job creation in Nigeria?
At its core, the World Bank Group approach is about sequencing and scale. When policy reform, public investment, and private capital work in concert, they create momentum that none can generate alone. Governments establish the regulatory certainty and institutional frameworks that enable investment. Private firms bring capital, expertise, and operational capacity. Development institutions bridge the gap that commercial financing alone cannot yet reach.

The structure recognises that each actor plays an essential role. The World Bank partners with governments to address policy and institutional barriers, building on their knowledge of local context and reform priorities. IFC works alongside private companies to structure financing and mobilise additional capital from commercial sources. MIGA provides political risk insurance that addresses uncertainties beyond any single investor’s control, enabling longer-term commitments. When these efforts align around shared objectives, projects can advance more efficiently from design through financing to implementation.

Nigeria offers instructive examples of this coordination in practice. Mission 300, an initiative to expand electricity access, brings together government policy leadership, public investment, and IFC-supported private capital to scale reliable power delivery. MIGA’s coverage helps address the political uncertainties that regulators and investors must navigate together in long-tenor energy projects. The results benefit multiple stakeholders: businesses gain operational reliability, employment becomes more stable, and households access dependable power.

AgriConnect applies similar principles to agriculture, combining government-led reform and advisory support with private investment to strengthen connections between farmers, processors, logistics providers, and financial institutions. By working with regulators and market participants to reduce risk at critical points in the value chain, the programme generates employment beyond primary productionin processing, transport, and trade while raising incomes across rural communities.

What makes the approach effective is the quality of partnership it requires. When government, regulators, the private sector, and development institutions maintain alignment around clear objectives and sustain their commitments, the results extend beyond individual projects. Employment becomes more durable, productivity gains accumulate, and economies build the resilience needed for long-term growth. That transition from coordination to sustained economic activity offers the clearest measure of whether development efforts are achieving their purpose.