Three megatrends defined global private equity in 2025: artificial intelligence infrastructure, energy transition, and the digitalisation of physical assets.
Infrastructure PE fundraising surged 58% year-on-year, outperforming a broadly muted landscape, while BlackRock's $40 billion acquisition of Aligned Data Centres headlined the exit market.
For Africa, where demand for AI infrastructure, clean energy financing, and digital connectivity is acute, these are not distant signals.
They are live investment propositions. The Bain Global Private Equity Report 2026 gives African stakeholders the global appetite data needed to position the continent's infrastructure pipeline to the right capital, at the right moment.
Three Megatrends, Record Capital, and Africa's Positioning Gap
The 2025 private equity exit market was driven by a global M&A boom driven by improved economic conditions, shifting business requirements, and the AI explosion, according to the Bain Global Private Equity Report 2026.
The landmark transaction was the $40 billion sale of Aligned Data Centres, divested by Macquarie to BlackRock and a consortium of tech giants specifically for AI data-processing capacity.
It is both the year's largest exit and its clearest strategic signal: global capital is racing to construct the physical infrastructure of the AI economy.
Infrastructure PE fundraising grew 58% year-on-year in 2025, the standout performer in a flat $1.3 trillion landscape where buyout fell 16%, direct lending fell 28%, and venture fell 21%.
For Africa, the three megatrends driving this surge have direct expressions:
- AI Infrastructure: Africa needs data centres, cloud connectivity, and the digital backbone the AI economy demands, attracting early global PE interest across East, West, and Southern Africa, but at a fraction of the scale their strategic importance warrants.
- Energy Transition: Holding 60% of the world's best solar resources, significant wind corridors, geothermal capacity, and abundant critical minerals, Africa commands the largest energy transition asset base globally, precisely what PE capital is racing to fund.
- Digital Infrastructure: Surging mobile internet adoption, digital financial services, and e-commerce are generating urgent demand for towers, fibre networks, data centres, and logistics platforms that infrastructure PE funds are purpose-built to finance.
Reading the Full Potential Diligence Framework for African Deals
One of the most operationally important contributions is its "full potential due diligence" framework, as recorded in the Bain 2026 report.
This multidisciplinary approach integrates commercial, technical, operational, AI/digital, and sustainability analysis into a single unified investment thesis. The report uses Hg Capital's OneStream Software deal as its showcase example: a $6.4 billion take-private where Hg combined commercial, technical, product, AI, and go-to-market diligence into a single inquiry that evaluated the company from all angles simultaneously.
The framework identifies six dimensions that every PE diligence process should address:
Africa's Infrastructure Positioning for the AI and Energy Capital Surge
The global PE capital appetite for AI infrastructure, energy transition, and digital connectivity is confirmed and growing. The Africa-specific infrastructure gap, an estimated $68 – $108 billion annually, according to the African Development Bank, maps precisely onto the themes driving this capital.
The challenge is not a shortage of need or a shortage of global capital appetite. It is the packaging, bankability, and institutional presentation of African infrastructure opportunities that the standard global PE LPs now require.
The Bain 2026 report makes clear that LP expectations are high: top-tier returns, consistent DPI, differentiated strategy, and data-backed execution capability. African infrastructure deals must meet this standard to access the capital flowing into the global infrastructure surge.
This means bankable project pipelines, credible DFI co-investment, robust offtake and concession frameworks, and fund managers with operational infrastructure expertise and verified track records.
Africa's Infrastructure Capital Access Strategy
Four actions to position Africa for the global infrastructure PE surge:
Develop AI infrastructure investment propositions
- African governments and private sector actors must develop bankable data centre, cloud infrastructure, and AI connectivity projects that match the investment parameters of global infrastructure PE funds.
Package energy transition assets at PE scale
- Move beyond individual solar projects to portfolio-level energy transition platforms that can absorb the $5–25 billion ticket sizes that global infrastructure PE megafunds require.
Build DFI co-investment frameworks
- IFC, AfDB, PROPARCO, and CDC/BII must develop systematic co-investment mechanisms with global infrastructure PE funds, using first-loss and guarantee instruments to crowd in private capital at scale.
Use full potential diligence as a standard for African infrastructure deals
- African infrastructure advisors, development banks, and government infrastructure units should adopt the Bain full potential diligence framework to ensure that every project presented to global capital can withstand the most demanding institutional scrutiny.
Path Forward – Africa Is the Infrastructure Frontier
The Capital Is Ready If the Pipeline Is
The Bain Global Private Equity Report 2026 documents a global PE capital surge into AI infrastructure, energy transition, and digital connectivity, exactly the three investment themes where Africa holds the greatest comparative advantage and the most urgent need. Infrastructure PE fundraising is at historic highs.
The appetite is confirmed. The capital is available. What Africa needs now is not a better story; it is a better pipeline: bankable, institutionally credible, full-potential-assessed project propositions that meet the standard global infrastructure PE funds are setting, deal by deal, across the world's most competitive private capital market. Africa's infrastructure moment has arrived. The capital is waiting. The pipeline must match it.
