Afreximbank to support African trade with $20B over 5 years

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) will provide $20 billion in order to support intra-African trade, according to Chairperson of the bank, Benedict Orama.

Orama added, in his speech during the bank’s 29 annual meetings for 2022, in the presence of President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, in the new administrative capital, that the bank has pumped $20 billion over the past five years to support African trade.

He stressed that thanks to the increase in the bank’s capital, the bank has supported trade in addition to supporting projects and infrastructure and supporting contracting companies that have projects in the continent, noting that the bank has pumped $8 billion to support projects.

Orama indicated that the Afreximbank is providing support of about $2.9 billion in Uganda for a project to generate electricity, stressing that the Arab Contractors Company is the main component of the project.

He praised the greatness and nobility of the Egyptian civilization, which is embodied in the historical temples, the pyramids and the Sphinx, as well as the Suez Canal and the High Dam in Aswan Governorate.

Orama said that Egypt left wonderful traces of history, expressing at the same time his fascination with the new administrative capital.

The head of the African Export-Import Bank rejected the idea that the continent did not rise again, saying: “Now we stand to witness this work in Egypt – in reference to the new administrative capital – to say that we can if we have the will.”

Chairperson of the Afreximbank indicated that the African Export-Import Bank launched in December 2021 a facility of about $7 billion for central banks and small and medium-sized enterprises, in order to confront and reduce the effects of the Coronavirus, and it also launched efforts to provide vaccines against this virus in African countries.

Orama added that the Bank responded quickly in response to the African Union’s call to raise $2 billion in the form of a guarantee facility so that Africa can purchase 400 million doses of a vaccine against the Coronavirus, and the Bank also worked with the African Union to launch a compensation fund as structural elements to conduct the transformation in vaccine production.

He said that the crises witnessed by the African continent posed many new challenges to the difficulties in accessing grains, agricultural fertilizers and basic foodstuffs that many countries of the continent suffer from.