One deal can touch forty desks. This is the path from screen to committee, on one verified record. The tools below run in the order an officer applies them — from "is this in our mandate?" to the committee pack an officer takes into the room. Every figure carries its three-state provenance; the screen narrows a universe for origination, it does not make the credit decision.
Scope: six headline development-finance institutions (EBRD, AfDB, AFC, Afreximbank, IFC, DFC). This is a curated set, not the full DFI universe — a complete per-institution eligibility matrix (others such as BII, FMO, Proparco, DBSA, and the complete country and exclusion lists) is a scheduled deepening.
Step 0 · the recordEvery desk reading the same record is the point of all of the above. Record a figure once — with the document it came from, that document’s date, and who checked it — and your colleagues stop re-finding it. Scoped to your organisation; nobody outside it can read or write.
Step 1 · the gatePick an institution; see which roster assets sit within its geography, sector and thematic mandate — and which fall outside. EBRD's six-country footprint cuts 94 assets to 22; the African multilaterals are continent-wide.
Step 2 · the funnelMandate → bankability → downstream risk → financeability, as one monotonic funnel that narrows to a vintage-stamped shortlist (no tier, score or ranking). Exports the committee pack — what an officer takes into the room.
Step 3 · the readThe whole decision on one screen for a single asset — bankability, returns, downstream and safeguards together, with the committee questions each answers.
Step 3b · gate by gateAll seven gates for each of 59 development-stage projects — what each shows — and the development banks whose published mandate covers the project’s country and sector. Financing status is shown as disclosed (an open financing gap, or financed and closing). No tier, score or verdict: the reading is yours. Mandate coverage is geography and sector only — not engagement, eligibility, ownership or sanctions screening.
Step 3c · is it still trueA status-in-motion view over the same 59 assets — which have financing, FID or construction events in flight, whose ownership is in transition, and how fresh each cited filing is. Shows where the snapshot is moving under you and where a refresh is due, so the screen reads as a living dataset rather than a static cut.
Step 4 · the lender's lensPast equity returns into the credit question: how much debt the cash flows can carry, and whether it still covers in a price downturn. Sizes indicative debt capacity and stresses DSCR across down/spot/up — surfacing that the biggest-NPV asset can have the thinnest downside coverage.
Step 5 · the deliverableA per-asset investment brief auto-composed from every layer — economics, sponsor, funding, time-to-cashflow, mandate fit, safeguards — in the eight-section committee format, with a three-state badge and source link on every line. Assembles the evidence with provenance; the call stays with the institution.
Hard gateThe gate a DFI screens before economics: per-asset ESIA status, the international standard it was benchmarked to (IFC PS / Equator), host-permit status, and the live Performance Standards — resettlement, biodiversity. Sourced where disclosed, named-Absent where not, against the IFC PS spine the institutions share.
Hard gateThe first gate — ahead of E&S and economics: per-asset jobs, government take, in-country value-addition, and the additionality test (would this happen without a DFI?), mapped to IFC AIMM / AfDB ADOA / DFC / EBRD. Revealed additionality where a DFI is already in; named-Absent where not.
Hard gateIncreasingly mandatory at IFC/EBRD/AfDB: the commodity's transition role on the demand side (IEA STEPS/APS/NZE), the project's own power source and emissions intensity, and physical-climate exposure. Transition-enabling vs neutral, with operational footprint where disclosed.
Hard gateThe gate the E&S screen does not cover: sponsor and beneficial-ownership transparency, a desk-level sanctions/PEP indicator, and SOE-governance exposure. Points the institution's KYC screen — it does not run it; flags are neutral diligence-routing markers, not allegations.
Hard gateThe gate before the Independent Engineer: study stage (scoping/PFS/DFS), currency, author, resource confidence and IE/lender-review status. Recent-DFS and in-construction assets are financing-ready; scoping-only, stalled-PFS and prior-owner-vintage studies are named as not.
Hard gateRepayment-source diligence: gold (9 of 13) is liquid spot — a strength, not a gap; the specialty/strategic commodities (Colluli take-or-pay, Ewoyaa offtake, Kurmuk stream, Ngualla via Shenghe) carry the offtake-counterparty structure a DFI underwrites.
RecordACLED admin1 event counts where captured, and operators' own technical-report statements on security, each with its source. Afrimintel's political-risk grades were withdrawn on 12 October 2026; country indices are on each country record as their publishers state them.
ReferenceThe diligence-grade financeability set — sponsor, capital need, funding status, offtake, deal structure — that forms the shortlist's deep layer.
Worked exampleA single asset taken end-to-end through the screen, with primary-source citations, as a worked illustration of the method.
MethodologyThe mandate-fit and four-layer method in full: the geography modes, the criticality classification, the monotonic funnel, the ranking basis, and the stated limits.
Afrimintel DFI screening · provenance-stamped · a screening signal, not an underwriting recommendation · v2.137.281 · every change on the record