Joseph Alain Saraka is a senior investment professional with more than 20 years of experience across investment banking, private equity and project finance, specialising in the structuring and execution of large-scale infrastructure and industrial transactions in Africa and Europe. His expertise spans equity and debt structuring, mergers and acquisitions, public-private partnerships and portfolio management, with a transaction record across ports, logistics, industrial platforms, toll roads and energy. He is experienced in mobilising capital, securing partnerships and leading negotiations with governments, development finance institutions and private investors.
He is Chief Strategy Officer and Head of M&A at Africa Finance Corporation, on secondment to Arise IIP and Arise IS, the Corporation’s portfolio companies, based in Dubai since October 2016. In that role he has spearheaded corporate strategy, M&A and growth initiatives for the Arise entities across Africa, originating, structuring and closing cross-border equity, debt and concession transactions with a cumulative value exceeding USD 2 billion, generating and monetising more than USD 40 million in dividends and approximately USD 700 million in capital gains.
His transactions at Arise include the EUR 189 million sale of Olam’s stakes in Arise IIP and Arise IS to ATIF; the acquisition of an 80 per cent stake in the TIPSP mineral port in Côte d’Ivoire and its development through to commissioning in 2022; the reorganisation and partial sale of three port assets in Gabon and Côte d’Ivoire to AP Moller Capital for EUR 219 million; the structuring of the Republic of Gabon’s EUR 160 million exchangeable bonds for the acquisition of GSEZ shares; venture investments in Aera, in carbon trading, and CrystalChain, in blockchain traceability; and partial divestments and joint ventures including stakes in the Société Autoroutière du Gabon toll road and the Nouakchott Container Terminal in Mauritania. He supported the USD 700 million capital raise with Vision Invest in 2025.
Between 2012 and 2016 he was Vice President for Project Finance and Private Equity within the Africa Finance Corporation core team in Lagos, originating and executing infrastructure financings and equity investments across the energy, transport and industrial sectors. He managed due diligence, financial modelling and investment committee processes for transactions in power, oil and gas and logistics, led M&A for power assets in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, structured financing for pipeline and oilfield development at Neconde Energy in Nigeria, coordinated debt restructuring for oil and gas operators through the 2014 to 2016 oil price crisis, and structured syndicated loans and risk allocation strategies for multi-lender transactions.
Earlier in his career he was Senior Credit Risk Manager at Gaselys, the GDF Suez trading business in Paris, developing traded credit risk methodologies across derivatives and commodities and assessing equity investments in cogeneration plants across Europe. He served as a Credit Risk Officer at Calyon Corporate and Investment Bank in Paris, as a Credit Analyst at Ecobank in Abidjan, where he structured commodity financings across cocoa, coffee, rubber, palm oil and oil and gas, and began his career as a Junior Financial Auditor at KPMG in Abidjan.
He holds an MSc in International Financial Analysis from NEOMA Business School in France and a BSc in Economics, Capital Markets and International Trade from the University of Lille 1. He has completed professional training in financial modelling with Mazars, project finance with Euromoney and IFF, environmental and social risk with FMO, and bank and financial institution analysis with Moody’s, S&P and First Finance.
