Emerging Markets Deal Structuring: Four Continents, One Approach

This blog examines four Delphos engagements completed between 2023 and 2025 across sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and Europe. It is addressed to corporate and project sponsors evaluating a capital raise who need deal evidence across complex geographies and institutional lender types. Emerging markets deal structuring in this period grew more selective as investors who could meet institutional lender requirements in conditions as they existed.

Emerging markets deal structuring is the process of designing a capital structure that meets the specific requirements of institutional lenders in markets where conventional financing is constrained by political risk, currency exposure, or regulatory complexity.

Why Macro Conditions Now Determine Who Gets Financing

Between 2023 and 2025, DFI mandates shifted toward geopolitically pivotal markets as institutional capital mobilization surged to record levels. Conventional commercial creditors repriced risk upward in those same environments. The advisor who could navigate both simultaneously became the decisive variable in whether a transaction closed.

Private capital mobilized by MDBs and DFIs to middle- and low-income countries reached US$87.9B in 2023, a 24% annual increase and the largest single-year gain since MDB joint reporting began, with lower-income countries drawing US$10.2B, up 40%. By 2024, total MDB and DFI private mobilization stood at US$278.5B, a 27% increase, with middle- and low-income countries drawing US$108.7B, up 31% from 2023.

Blended finance reached US$15B in 2023, a five-year high with 40% of deals exceeding US$100MM against 17% the prior year. Traditional creditors repriced political risk in frontier markets to levels sponsors could not absorb without restructuring the capital stack. The structural shifts in Emerging Markets capital flows that have continued into 2026 reflect the same underlying dynamic.

When Conventional Capital Channels Close

By 2023, bilateral commercial facilities increasingly required development finance co-investment or guarantees to close in geopolitically exposed markets. The mandate contraction was structural, not cyclical. Commercial banks and major investment banks facing regulatory scrutiny under Basel IV implementation tightened exposure where conventional capital markets access had narrowed.

How Design Discipline Changes the Outcome

DFI capital does not replace conventional lending automatically. The fundamental challenge in Emerging Markets deal structuring is sequencing: getting the right structure in place before submission, not retrofitted after. Deals fall through when advisors approach DFIs without capital structures matched in advance. Transactions built on that alignment reached close.

DFI Capital Across Africa and Asia: PowerGen and MIK

DFI-aligned structured financing in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia required the same discipline in both transactions: design the capital structure around what the institution required before approaching it. For PowerGen and MIK, that alignment was not a post-design adjustment. It determined whether long-term capital was available at all.

DFC committed a record US$12.1B in FY2024 across 44 countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, 666 million people remain without basic electricity access globally, with 18 of the 20 largest electricity access deficits concentrated in the region. International clean energy flows to developing countries stagnated at US$24.6B in 2024, and renewable energy capital deployment in Africa continues to require instruments that standard channels cannot provide. In Mongolia, public debt declined from 64.5% of GDP in 2022 to 44.5% in 2024, with mining revenue more than doubling over the same period, improving the macro backdrop even as long-term DFI debt remained the only viable instrument for mortgage asset liquidity.

PowerGen: Distributed Renewable Energy Across West Africa

PowerGen (Windgen Power USA), the parent company of distributed renewable energy operations across Kenya, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, required equity financing for 120 MW across multiple jurisdictions with separate regulatory standards. Delphos arranged a DFI consortium equity raise drawing on InfraCo, IFU, EDFI, AfDB’s SEFA, and PIDG, assembling blended capital from five institutions where no single conventional creditor could provide the full structure. Transaction amount undisclosed.

MIK: Mongolia’s Largest DFC Financing

Mortgage assets generate predictable cash flows against specific assets, making long-term development finance debt the only viable instrument to provide liquidity at this tenor. Delphos designed a US$150MM DFC debt facility for MIK (Mongolian Mortgage Corporation LLC), matched to the tenor of mortgage assets and the largest DFC financing in Mongolian history.

Impact Capital and Energy Security: MAXXA and ONEX

In Chile and Greece, capital structure design determined the creditor pool. MAXXA accessed impact investor debt through an arrangement that standard capital providers declined to underwrite. ONEX attracted DFC senior debt by positioning a European shipyard within the energy security investment thesis. US natural gas accounts for nearly 20% of Greece’s total gas demand and over 60% of all LNG imported, with 19 of 27 LNG tankers at the Revithoussa terminal carrying US supply in 2024, and Europe increased LNG regasification capacity by almost a third between 2021 and 2025, with EU terminal utilization climbing from 42% in 2024 to 55% in Q1 2026.

MAXXA: Impact Investor Debt for a Fintech Lender in Chile

Traditional creditors’ collateral frameworks leave a gap in Latin American SME lending that investors building portfolio companies in financial inclusion sectors can fill. Delphos structured a US$7MM debt facility for MAXXA through Symbiotics, aligning the impact investor’s criteria with a borrower profile that conventional underwriting had declined.

ONEX: DFC Senior Debt and European Energy Security in Greece

During the energy transition period, this strategic infrastructure became an investment priority. Delphos arranged US$125MM in DFC senior secured debt for ONEX Elefsis Shipyards in Greece, positioning European energy security infrastructure within the mandate. Similar geopolitical logic applied across the Western Balkans deal record, where multiple European frontier transactions followed the same structural approach.

Emerging Markets Deal Structuring: The Variables That Determine Close

The common thread across all four deals was structural alignment: the advisor’s ability to design the stack around what institutional lenders required under prevailing market terms, not as sponsors preferred them. Geography, sector, and macro backdrop differed. The mechanism that produced financial close did not.

The four transactions below differ by geography, sector, and macro condition, yet each reached completion through the same structural discipline, tailored to the specific requirements of its institutional lender.

“We have closed transactions across four continents because geopolitical complexity does not reduce institutional capital. It reshuffles it toward advisors who can meet lender requirements.” – Bart Turtelboom, Chairman & CEO of Delphos.

DFI Requirements vs. Commercial Lender Terms: What Changes Across Markets

Among the 123 blended finance deals totaling US$18B closed in 2024, market participants including private equity firms and impact investors deployed US$6.9B in private equity investments and commercial capital, outpacing DFI deployment for the first time. Real financing costs in Emerging Markets had reached their highest level in a decade, with geopolitical risk events contributing to sovereign risk premium increases across the asset class. Alignment with these institutions, including discipline around deal terms, remained the variable that separated transactions that closed from those that did not.

How to Align Capital Structure With Institutional Appetite in Any Geography

Institutional appetite in Emerging Markets does not contract uniformly. DFIs prioritize market expansion and long-term value in geopolitically pivotal markets when commercial creditors reprice, shaped by global growth mandates that require capital deployment where conventional channels have withdrawn. Across Delphos’s track record across Emerging Markets, covering more than 600 transactions in 100-plus countries, disciplined design around creditor criteria has been the consistent determinant of close.

Structure Your Capital Raise With Delphos

Geopolitical complexity does not eliminate institutional capital. Across four transactions on four continents, capital concentrated among advisors who could meet lender criteria in conditions as they existed. Delphos provides Capital Raising and Transaction Advisory across the full scope of Emerging Markets deal structuring: debt and equity raises, LP capital commitments, and advisory mandates in markets constrained by political risk, currency exposure, or institutional complexity. With more than 600 transactions completed in over 100 countries, Delphos brings development finance relationships, design experience, and a cross-continental record to each engagement.

Contact Delphos to discuss structuring options for your next capital raise →