The Coronation Infrastructure Fund (CIF) reported total interest income of ₦2.08 billion, however the vast majority was derived from cash placements rather than the long-term infrastructure projects it was designed to finance.
The disconnect highlights a growing scrutiny over fee structures within Nigeria’s private equity and infrastructure fund space, as CIF’s management fees climbed to ₦171.4 million despite a conservative deployment of its ₦9.9 billion in total assets.
The Income Mix: Placements Over Projects
A granular look at the fund’s 2025 performance reveals a heavy reliance on money market instruments over core infrastructure debt:
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Interest from Placements: ₦1.95 billion, representing the lion’s share of total income.
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Interest from Infrastructure Loans: A mere ₦135.8 million, showing little to no growth from previous periods.
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The Deployment Gap: Of the fund’s ₦9.9 billion in available total assets, only 51.8% (₦5.13 billion) has been deployed as infrastructure loans, leaving nearly half (48%) of the fund’s assets in highly liquid, short-term investments.
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Core Mandate Stagnation: The flat performance of the infrastructure loan portfolio suggests that the fund is finding it difficult to originate bankable, high-impact projects despite its significant liquidity buffer.
The Coronation Infrastructure Fund (the “Fund” or “CIF”) is a closed-end debt fund registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) as a ₦200 billion Shelf Programme under the guidelines for Infrastructure Funds.
The Fund aims to channels long-term institutional capital to finance transformative, revenue-generating infrastructure projects across Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa.
Sponsored by Coronation Asset Management Limited (the Fund Manager), the CIF is structured to deliver both strong inflation-linked returns and measurable socio-economic impact, delivering sustainable returns through strategic investments in transformative projects.
The CIF is supposed to invest the net proceeds from each offer in loans, securities, and securitised debt instruments of infrastructure companies, projects or special purpose vehicles created to facilitate or promote investment in infrastructure.
The Fund aims to achieve a target return of 3% over and above the prevailing yield on the Federal Government of Nigeria Bond with a similar tenor to the tenor of the relevant Series.
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