Africa’s Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) is supporting Africa to develop a strong industrial and export processing capacity to undergird the continent’s vision of trade-led development and boost the agenda of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), an official said on Thursday.
Benedict Oramah, President of Afreximbank said this during his keynote lecture at the AfCFTA Secretariat in Accra, the Ghanaian capital under the theme “The Nexus Between Trade Finance, Industrial Development, and Economic Integration in Africa: The Role of Afreximbank.”
Oramah noted that Africa also needs to develop its automotive industry through intra-regional partnerships to take advantage of the opportunities presented by AfCFTA.
“Trade-led development in Africa cannot rely solely on trading the same primary commodities. It must entail moving up the value chain,” Oramah stated.
According him, Afreximbank has, therefore, aligned its financing to support industrialization and export development across the continent.
In 2024 alone, he said the bank facilitated more than 50 industrial projects across all five regions of Africa, including the completion of two large industrial parks in West Africa and a 60,000-per-day petroleum refinery facility in Southern Africa.
“Such investments in energy and industrial infrastructure are equipping African economies to produce the goods that will be traded under ASfCFTA,” he stated.
Moreover, he said the bank is also collaborating closely with Arise Integral Industrial Platforms to drive investments into industrial parks to anchor value chain developments on the continent.
On the proposed African automotive industry, Oramah said Afreximbank recognizes that no single African country alone has the market size to sustain a large automotive industry.
“The bank has, therefore, developed a strategy to create a Pan-African automotive value-chain, from component manufacturing in some countries, to assembling in in others, leveraging the tariff-free movement of auto-parts under AfCFTA,” he added.
The official added that the collaboration between Afreximbank and AfCFTA is a model of how a financial institution could directly underpin a policy initiative. “This model could be replicated in other areas where Africa needs to take charge of its destiny.”
On his part, Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of AfCFTA, said the partnership between Afreximbank and AfCFTA over the past five years has been enduring and impactful, helping to move the initiative from vision to implementation,” and our partnership has become a model of collaboration grounded in a shared commitment to Africa’s economic transformation.”
“Our work together has delivered tools traders can use. We will keep working with Afreximbank and other partners to turn frameworks into transactions and commitments into jobs, aligning trade policy with finance, standards, and skills so the AfCFTA delivers measurable benefits in every region,” Mene pledged.