“You cannot do good if you’re not financially sustainable. ”
— Leslie Maasdorp
What does it take to build a development finance institution from scratch — and then lead one of the oldest? And what would it mean for the $2.4 trillion annual climate finance gap if institutional capital finally started flowing into emerging markets at scale?
Today’s guest is Leslie Maasdorp, Chief Executive Officer of British International Investment (BII), the UK government’s development finance institution with a £9.5 billion portfolio across 45 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia.
Listen in as Leslie traces a career that begins in a South African prison cell — detained without trial at 19 under apartheid’s state of emergency — and runs through the trade union movement, Nelson Mandela’s government, Goldman Sachs International, and thirteen years in global investment banking, before arriving at the founding management team of the New Development Bank in Shanghai, where he spent nine years building a multilateral institution from five people and an empty office to a $40–45 billion balance sheet with a AA+ credit rating.
You’ll hear how BII’s newly launched 2026–2031 strategy is designed to move the institution from deploying its own capital to mobilising private sector capital at scale — crowding in pension funds, insurers, and sovereign wealth funds through first-loss structures, concessional tranches, and de-risking instruments. Leslie walks through the Allianz Climate Emerging Markets Fund as a live example: $150 million in concessional capital in, $850 million raised, a 6x multiplier.
From the structural barriers that prevent UK pension funds from investing in Africa today, to why perceived default risk in emerging markets is systematically overstated relative to actual performance, Leslie offers a practitioner’s case for why the development finance system needs a structural reset — and what the new architecture might look like.
What is the most underrated instrument in development finance? Why did the donor-recipient model fail, and what replaces it?
Leslie answers these questions and many more.
If you work in institutional capital allocation, blended finance, or emerging market infrastructure — or if you want to understand how a AA+ rated balance sheet gets built from five sovereigns averaging BBB- — this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Listen to the full conversation.
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Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SHOW NOTES:
[03:09] Goldman Sachs & Early Investment Banking Career
[06:58] Lessons from the 2008 Financial Crisis
[08:15] Building the New Development Bank in Shanghai
[11:24] NDB: Mission, Structure & AA+ Credit Rating
[16:07] Personal Life, Covid & Russia-Ukraine at NDB
[19:40] Arrested Under Apartheid: Detention Without Trial
[21:59] Prison, Solitude & Graduating with Distinction
[25:08] Growing Up in Bethelsdorp & the Road to Activism
[32:15] Trade Unions, London Scholarship & Joining the ANC
[38:53] Building Post-Apartheid South Africa
[44:42] Joining BII: The World’s Oldest DFI
[46:51] What BII Does & How It Deploys Capital
[53:31] BII’s Mandate to Experiment & the Case for Reform
[57:17] BII’s 2026–2031 Strategy: Mobilizing Private Capital
[01:02:22] First-Loss Structures & the Allianz ACE Fund
[01:05:53] Inside the Investment Machine: Growth, Catalyst & Kinetic
[01:09:17] Risk, Returns & Crowding In UK Pension Capital
[01:15:11] Climate Finance: The Ayana Case Study
[01:17:22] Mission 300: Electrifying Africa by 2030
[01:20:13] Growth Investment Partners Zambia & BII’s Entrepreneurial Model
[01:24:56] The Big Picture: $2.4T Climate Gap
[01:26:48] Rapid Fire Questions
Additional Resources:
MORE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEWS:
“The old system is no longer fit for purpose. We’re going to have to be smarter. We’re going to have to find money from elsewhere to be more catalytic. ”
— Leslie Maasdorp
