Pan-Continental Power Play

Funding Package for Power Play

Care to Change the World

A Funding Model Designed for Realization

The Pan-Continental Power Play was never conceived as an abstract vision, but as a direct continuation of lessons learned from implementation. Its financial foundation traces back to the Social Development and Empowering Programme (SDEP) — a programme jointly shaped with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to meet the rigorous standards of bankability, sustainability, and long-term viability.

This approach reversed the conventional project cycle. Rather than proposing ideas to financiers post facto, SDEP was co-developed with its primary financial institution, ensuring early-stage alignment with financing requirements. This enabled the project to move beyond wishful thinking: from vision to bankability, from bankability to execution. Once the financial groundwork was secured, we invited countries, partners, and subcontractors into a fully structured delivery mechanism. The model proved a critical insight: anyone can build a project — few can make it fundable, fewer still can make it executable.

The same methodology underpins the Pan-Continental Power Play, but at a broader scale.

Through the Global Social Equity Alliance (GSEA), each Power Play framework is built on a dual structure:

One pillar focused on policy, governance, and implementation across five integrated components
One pillar dedicated to a comprehensive, market-aligned funding package

This funding model leverages Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), sovereign mechanisms, and private capital, but differs fundamentally from traditional development finance. It is anchored in market terms, yet safeguarded by institutional oversight — including UNDP, thematic bond structures, and the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) model.

This dual commitment ensures two outcomes:

Borrowers gain access to lower-cost capital, with terms tailored to support structural transformation
Investors receive guarantees of control, transparency, and outcome-based assurance, via frameworks that track and manage impact at each stage

The result is a balanced financial ecosystem—one capable of supporting complex, long-term transformation, while respecting both the sovereignty of the borrower and the expectations of the financier. It transforms development from a discretionary activity into an investable, managed, and accountable system.

Designed for Impact. Structured for Stability.

At the heart of the Pan-Continental Power Play’s funding model lies a rare and decisive feature: a 50-year structural framework. This long-term horizon is not incidental — it is deliberate, and necessary.

Too many development programmes are constrained by short mandate cycles, shifting priorities, or unstable political environments. Their design often ends where the election calendar begins. By contrast, the Power Play was built to transcend these cycles. Its financial and governance architecture is immune to electoral turnover, designed instead to deliver generational transformation.

The 50-year framework provides both stability and predictability — for governments, for investors, and for communities. It ensures that investments are not only deployed but maintained, scaled, and sustained. Through this lens, development is no longer a temporary injection of resources but a long-term restructuring of local and regional systems.

At the same time, this structure is not a grant-based model. It is a return-oriented mechanism that recognizes the importance of economic viability. The funding package is designed with impact as its north star, but also with financial rigor at its core. This allows Development Finance Institutions, sovereign wealth funds, and private capital to participate with confidence, knowing that returns are not speculative but structured, measured, and managed over time.

To safeguard this balance — between mission and margin, impact and income — the model leverages tools such as:

Thematic bonds with verified impact criteria
Blended finance structures to absorb risk and unlock scale
Outcome tracking through the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF)
Institutional safeguards via multilateral partners like the UNDP

By combining long-term financial engineering with values-driven governance, the Power Play delivers more than infrastructure or investment. It delivers resilience — economic, political, and social. It ensures that the systems we build today are still functioning, evolving, and delivering returns decades from now, long after the initial implementers have left office.

This is not just development. It is durable transformation.

Regional Application: The ACTESA Power Play

The Pan-Continental Power Play model is not a theoretical construct — it is already in motion. A leading example is the ACTESA Power Play, developed under the auspices of the Global Social Equity Alliance (GSEA) and aligned with the priorities of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

At the center of this initiative is a landmark Letter of Intent for a funding package of $300 billion, structured in accordance with GSEA’s 50-year framework. This agreement — grounded in both development rationale and financial viability — represents one of the most ambitious regional undertakings in Africa’s recent history. It was not offered in isolation but presented as a joint proposition to COMESA, combining:

The GSEA Framework: with its dual-track approach — development architecture on one side, structured financing on the other
The ACTESA Mandate: focusing on agricultural transformation, regional food security, and trade facilitation
Pan-Continental Coordination: ensuring alignment with Agenda 2063, AfCFTA, and COMESA’s own regional integration strategy

COMESA has officially expressed interest in adopting the Power Play as a strategic instrument for regional transformation. This is not only a vote of confidence in the model, but a confirmation of institutional readiness to deploy large-scale funding under structured, long-term conditions.

The ACTESA Power Play serves multiple purposes:

It acts as a catalyst for agricultural investment and innovation
It offers a coherent vehicle for integrating trade, infrastructure, and food systems
It ensures that development finance is both absorbed effectively and governed transparently

In doing so, the ACTESA application proves the replicability and adaptability of the Power Play model. It demonstrates that — with the right partners, frameworks, and discipline — a $300 billion commitment is not aspirational. It is actionable.

This regional implementation marks a turning point. It signals that Africa is not merely ready for large-scale transformation — it is already engineering it, under its own terms, with its own instruments.

Scaling the Model: From ACTESA to a Pan-Continental and Global Framework

The ACTESA Power Play is not an isolated pilot. It represents the first full-scale deployment of the GSEA framework in partnership with a Regional Economic Community (REC), built on pre-approved financing conditions and institutional coordination. This experience has demonstrated that the model is not only viable — it is scalable.

The logic of expansion is straightforward:
We do not need to reinvent the process for each REC. Instead, we scale what already works.

The structural components — long-term financing, thematic bonds, INFF compliance, and integrated development architecture — are modular and adaptive. As a result, the groundwork laid with ACTESA is now actively being extended to:

Other African RECs such as ECOWAS, EAC, and SADC — where early engagement is already underway
Asian blocs and regional organizations — supported by high-level dialogue with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and other regional DFIs
The Americas — where a Pan-American Power Play is being structured in coordination with regional development banks and cross-border frameworks for infrastructure, climate, and trade

Each new application builds on the same foundation:
a 50-year framework, impact-driven capital, and institutional ownership.

This approach provides two critical advantages:

Speed and credibility — by leveraging a tested model with proven commitments
Investor and political confidence — through structured governance and risk mitigation mechanisms, safeguarding both return and impact

By rooting every deployment in the same GSEA-backed architecture, the Power Play is rapidly evolving into a global mechanism for equitable transformation. It empowers regions to move from aspiration to action — not by asking what is possible, but by showing what is already being done.

The momentum is not hypothetical. It is operational.
What began with ACTESA and COMESA is now on track to become the leading public-private delivery platform for long-term regional development across three continents.