Washington, D.C. — The US$350m New Africa Infrastructure Fund, backed by the US government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), is up for grabs because of the failure of the firm managing the fund to raise private finance.

The fund is the largest of several Africa funds OPIC began launching in 1990. New Africa Advisors, a subsidiary of the Durham, North Carolina-based Sloan Financial Group led by Maceo K. Sloan, was chosen, over several competing investment houses, to manage the fund in 1999.

The Sloan group is the largest African-American owned investment comany in the United States.

OPIC requires that one-third of the fund's overall total must be private equity brought in by the managing firm - about $120m in the case of the Infrastructure Fund. New Africa Advisors missed a July 2000 deadline to raise this money and was given an extension until September but the group was still short of about half the money at that date.

They received another extension until November 30 to raise the capital but have now failed to meet this deadline as well.

According to Congressional sources, there will not be another extension. OPIC has refused to comment. But a Congressional aide who has been monitoring the situation says of the Sloan group: "Their contract has expired. Are you going to give them another chance? I don't think so."

OPIC has not yet informed the Congress of its next step. "OPIC is quite angry at how Sloan's group has turned out," said one Hill staffer close to the situation. Calls to the Sloan Group's office for comment were not returned.

The fate of the Infrastructure Fund is of particular interest because of the controversy surrounding another Sloan-managed OPIC fund, the $120m New Africa Opportunity Fund.

Three months ago the Sloan group was forced to surrender management of that fund after an OPIC investigation uncovered "substantial abuses" in the fund's management and investment practices, according to one Congressional aide who asked not to be identified.