Cardano Development, the frontier markets finance foundation set up by Dutch risk manager Cardano, is to take over the running of a fund supporting infrastructure projects in Africa and Asia worth $500 million, with a brief to double its operations in size.

The fund, GuarantCo, set up a decade ago with money from the governments of Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, provides guarantees for loans made by banks in states including Nigeria, Cameroon, Pakistan and Nepal to local infrastructure projects.