Ayaan Adam

Certain careers seem to have been mapped out in a single stroke and that of Zeinab Ayaan Adam, 58, CEO of AFC Capital Partners, is a good example. From the International Finance Corporation (IFC – World Bank Group) to the Green Climate Fund, and now at AFC Capital Partners1 , her career has been underpinned by one constant: striving to harness capital to the development of emerging markets. “All the experiences I’ve had have prepared me for what I do today, even though, for a long time, I didn’t know what the final picture would look like,” she says in a video call from San Francisco, where she is undertaking AI training. That final picture is actually AFC Capital Partners. When she joined the Lagos-based organisation in 2020, she was handed “a blank canvas”. In 2024, she launched the Infrastructure Climate Resilient Fund (ICRF). With the backing of the Green Climate Fund and the European Investment Bank inter alia, the fund aims to mobilise US$3.7 billion to finance resilient infrastructure in Africa. As Ayaan explains, “The African continent contributes very little to global emissions, yet it bears the brunt of the impacts of climate change. We can no longer design infrastructure without first mapping its future climate vulnerability.”