About
A pan-African bridge to Nordic capital
Africa–Finland Invest is convened and hosted by Sierra Leone. It exists because good projects and willing capital rarely fail for lack of interest — they fail for lack of a structured room in which to meet.
Why Sierra Leone convenes it
Sierra Leone has taken the role of convenor rather than sole beneficiary. The country hosts the secretariat, chairs the forums and opens the programme to companies from all 54 African countries. That choice is deliberate: Nordic investors are best served by a credible continental pipeline, and African companies are best served by a single, trusted front door into Finnish and Nordic capital rather than fifty-four separate ones.
How the platform works
- 01
Apply
Companies, investors and delegates apply through a single page. Every submission reaches the secretariat directly.
- 02
Review
The secretariat reviews each company application for completeness, sector fit and investment readiness.
- 03
Publish
Approved companies are published to the members-only Deal Room as opportunity cards with funding ask, stage and Finnpartnership eligibility.
- 04
Match
Registered investors request meetings. Each match is tracked from requested, to meeting booked, to recorded outcome.
- 05
Convene
Matches are scheduled into the Helsinki and Freetown forums, where the meetings actually happen face to face.
Finnpartnership cost-sharing
Finnish SMEs: 70% of project costs covered via Finnpartnership (50% for large companies). Finnpartnership support is designed to de-risk the early, expensive part of building a cross-border business relationship: feasibility work, partner identification, training, pilots and travel. For an African project sponsor this matters because it lowers the cost for a Finnish partner to take the first serious look.
Applications indicate whether a project is likely to qualify, and the forum programme includes a clinic that walks sponsors and their Finnish counterparts through what is eligible and how the cost-sharing is claimed.