Debt capacity
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September 2026 · Nairobi
Rebel East Africa can structure a water project. Kenyan commercial banks still will not fund one. I have spent this year inside a Kenyan bank watching why, and the gap is smaller than it looks.
Rebel already works with Kenyan commercial banks to pull private money into water. That is a financial-sector job wearing an infrastructure hat.
Banks are not refusing the risk. They are refusing the maturity. Deposits are short; a bulk water concession is not.
Three structures move a project from unfundable to fundable without touching the tariff. The model below shows what each one is worth.
Move the assumptions. The point is not my numbers, it is the shape of the curve: past a certain rate and below a certain tenor, no amount of sponsor enthusiasm produces a bankable project.
Illustrative. Level annuity, no grace period, no refinancing, single currency, tariff held flat. Every assumption is a slider on purpose: the argument does not depend on my inputs, and I would rather you break it than believe it.
A partial credit guarantee on the back end of the loan converts a seven-year bank appetite into a twelve-year asset. The guarantor carries the years nobody wants, not the whole exposure. Cheapest lever on the board, and the one the model above rewards most.
Banks take the short, amortising, local-currency tranche they can price. A DFI or a fund takes the long tail. One project, two instruments, two risk appetites, no argument about who is being brave.
Most of the risk premium on a Kenyan water or health concession is not construction risk. It is uncertainty about whether a county pays on time. Escrow, a payment history that a credit officer can read, and an intercept mechanism are worth more basis points than another feasibility study.
I am the Executive Assistant to the Managing Director of the leading Kenyan microfinance bank. I sit in the meetings where lending decisions are argued, and I know which objection actually kills a deal and which one is decoration. Before that I spent 5 years at Telkom Kenya: corporate strategy, ~ 12 months running T-kash with the profit and loss in my name, and the information memorandum for a transaction at scale. Telecom towers, payments rails and fibre are infrastructure that happens to be digital, and they are financed the same way as everything else on your project list.
What I have not done is close a PPP. That is a real gap and I am not going to dress it up. What I bring instead is the side of the table Rebel has to persuade, a network inside it, and a habit of building the tool rather than requesting it. This page is the argument and the model in one file, written the same day that I read your vacancy.
Financial modellingTransaction documentsCFA Private EquityMPhil, UCT GSBSix Sigma MBBShips its own software
The ask. Thirty minutes with Rob or Prashiv.