Afreximbank in the Era of the AfCFTA

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) was established in 1993 as a crisis management institution on the heels of the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. It has since grown into Africa's foremost regional integration bank, and is playing a critical role in supporting the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). In addition to raising resources dedicated to the expansion of intra-African trade and the diversification of sources of growth, Afreximbank has bolstered its trade facilitation programmes and drawn on digitalisation to build an integrated payments system to assuage liquidity constraints and sustainably boost cross-border trade and growth. This paper reviews various innovative measures and facilities deployed by the bank to finance and leverage more resources toward a successful realisation of the AfCFTA.