Explore Explainers & Weekly Insights

The World Bank approved a $1.5 billion Infrastructure Modernization Development Policy Loan (DPL) for South Africa—concessional budget support designed to attack the country’s most binding growth constraints: failing freight rail, congested ports, and a power system still digging out from years of rolling blackouts.

EIG’s view is simple: 2026 winners will treat refinancing as a portfolio operation. That means running a repeatable “refi gap” diagnostic across assets, creating a menu of interventions (public + private), and standardizing lender-ready disclosure.

The capital stack is often hybrid: public funding for the platform, private capital for vertical development, and specialized energy finance for electrification. The winners in 2026 will be sponsors who can coordinate those layers and present them as one coherent investment story.

The risks are real, and 2026 capital will price them. Construction costs can overwhelm feasibility. Community pushback can shift political timelines. And the “secondary policies” matter: tax incentives, infrastructure capacity, school seats, and power availability. Still, citywide text amendments remain one of the highest-leverage signals because they change the denominator for every pro forma.

The EIG lens is that LL97-style regimes don’t just create retrofit spending—they reorganize the market around “upgradeable” buildings. The winners are owners who finance upgrades like a redevelopment: tight scopes, credible vendors, risk buffers, and capital sources chosen for certainty.