Richard Parry

Richard Parry is one of the founding partners of the eleQtra Group, bringing more than 25 years of experience in the development, structuring and financing of infrastructure assets in emerging markets. He is based in London and focuses on project finance and the development of renewable-power projects across Africa, with a particular emphasis on wind and hydro. eleQtra specialises in assembling greenfield infrastructure investments in sub-Saharan Africa and, in roughly its first twelve years, helped catalyse more than $1.5 billion of investment in new infrastructure on the continent.

Before co-founding eleQtra, Parry spent much of his career at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group. He served as IFC's Head of Syndications and Securities, leading major financing transactions with companies such as Globo Cabo and Transportadora de Gas del Norte across Latin America and Asia. Earlier in his career he lived and worked in Africa, where he launched and managed IFC's business-development and investment programme for Eastern and Southern Africa — an operation that has since grown into a substantial IFC business.

Parry was educated at the University of Cambridge (BA and MA) and holds an MBA from the University of Michigan. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Project Finance at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He is closely identified with eleQtra's flagship Cabeólica wind project in Cape Verde, serving as a Cabeólica board director and appearing at the project's February 2012 inauguration alongside Cape Verde's Prime Minister.

• Develops and finances greenfield ("from-scratch") infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa, taking projects from concept through structuring, financing and financial close rather than backing early-stage companies.
• Strong emphasis on renewable energy — wind and hydro power — alongside other power and infrastructure assets (irrigation, transport, gas).
• Works through public-private partnership (PPP) structures, blending private capital with development-finance institutions, host governments and donor grants (e.g. USTDA, PIDG/InfraCo Africa).
• Firm-level track record of catalysing $1.5bn+ of infrastructure investment across sub-Saharan Africa, with a stated interest in adding "more renewable energy projects" on the continent.
• Brings a development-finance and project-finance discipline (IFC syndications, emerging-markets risk structuring) to bankable, first-of-a-kind projects.