Afreximbank (The African Export-Import Bank), Africa’s foremost multilateral trade finance institution, has provided a $400 million revolving global credit facility to the ETG (Export Trading Group).
The credit facility seeks to enable ETG to keep connecting African farmers to markets, alongside expanding access to essential inputs to boost agricultural productivity in Africa.
In the long term, the credit facility will help remove the stumbling blocks faced by African agricultural exporters so as to give small and medium-scale enterprises access to regional and international markets.
Furthermore, it will reduce post-harvest losses by availing easier access to yield-enhancing inputs, and networks that will get output to both regional and international markets. It will also support the flow of food supplies across the continent, even amid the disruption triggered by the global coronavirus pandemic.
With the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Agreement) almost coming into fruition, the timing is opportune to shape a more productive and resilient agricultural sector, thus delivering both prosperity and food security for the African continent’s future.
Kanayo Awani, Managing Director of Afreximbank’s Intra-African Trade Initiative
According to Afreximbank’s estimates, Africa spent over $90 billion on food imports in 2019, despite the fact that it possesses up to 60% of the world’s remaining arable land. Additionally, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that up to 5% of Africa’s agricultural production is lost every year from farm-to-market as a result of problems such as sub-optimal use of inputs and improper post-harvest storage, processing and transportation facilities. These challenges have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted supply chains, heightened price volatility and could further undermine household consumption.
Afreximbank is a pan-African multilateral financial institution with the mandate of financing and promoting intra-and extra-African trade.
At the end of 2019, its total assets and guarantees stood at $15.5 billion, and its shareholders’ funds amounted to $2.8 billion. The bank was voted “African Bank of the Year” in 2019, disbursing more than $31 billion between 2016 and 2019.
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