The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) will continue to give concerted focus to using its strategic programmes and partnerships to attract international capital to finance investments in Africa, Jean-Louis Ekra, President of the Bank, has said.
Mr. Ekra, who was speaking in Lome during a round table discussion at the Africa Best Practices Forum, told the audience that in 2014, Afreximbank arranged or co-arranged syndications facilities with a value in excess of $1 billion using its own direct contribution and about $1 billion in contribution by its financial partners. Those loans were used to finance major projects across Africa, including rail infrastructure in Ethiopia and oil projects in Nigeria.
He said that in implementing its approach, the Bank sought to ensure a good balance between international financing and investment development in Africa.
The President said that the success of African countries in achieving the objective of sustainable development would depend largely on the ability of the governments to implement structural investments that could help them speed up the process of structural transformation.
Through such investments, they would achieve a greater diversification of exports from Africa and that would bring about increased integration of Africa’s economies into the global economy, he explained.
He noted that despite the recent successes in terms of diversification of the sources of international finance into Africa and the emergence of new types of financing tools, Africa’s needs remained enormous, particularly in the infrastructure sector.
Afreximbank President Jean-Louis Ekra (first right) and other speakers during the round table discussion at the Africa Best Practices Forum in Lome