On Friday 30th June 2017, the African Export-Import Bank (Afrexim Bank) signed several deals with the leading business men in the continent. This took place at the 24th Afrexim Bank Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Shareholders taking place in Kigali, Rwanda.
The bank signed a $100 million credit facility deal with the Executive Chairman, Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu. It also signed a $1billion deal with Africa’s richest man, founder and chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote.
“This is important for the development of our continent and it is the way to promote the economic development in our continent, “ Tony Elumelu said.
The deal with Heirs Holdings is expected to help boost Heirs holding’s activities across Africa especially in the area of real estate and hospitality. Although the details of the deal between Dangote and Afrexim were not made public, there are indications that the deal was meant for the Dangote Cement which is increasingly expanding across Africa. People familiar with the Afrexim Bank’s activities revealed that this deal, which is expected help boost intra-African trade, is the first of its kind signed by Afrexim Bank and a private organisation. This comes a year after Dangote acquired equity in Afrexim Bank in order to promote intra-African trade.
It would be recalled also that last year, The President and Board Chairperson of Afrexim Bank, Dr Benedict Oramah said that working with the Dangote Group will build a supply chain financing across Africa that could reach $1 billion in the short term. He also explained that this would promote intra-regional trade, growth of SMEs and creating much needed jobs.
What you didn’t know about Afrexim Bank
Afrexim Bank is the foremost Pan-African multilateral financial institution devoted to financing and promoting African trade.
It was established under two basic constitutive instruments which are the Agreement signed by member States and multilateral organisations, which gives the bank the status of an international multilateral organisation and the Charter, which governs its corporate structure and operations.
The bank was established in October 1993 by African governments, African private and institutional investors, and non-African investors.
Afrexim Bank commenced operations on 30 September 1994, following the signature of a Headquarters Agreement with the host Government in August 1994.
Since 1994, it has approved more than 51 billion dollars in credit facilities for African businesses, including about 10.3 billion dollars in 2016.
Afreximbank has total assets of 9.4 billion dollars as at April 30, 2016
The Bank is rated BBB+ (GCR), Baa1 (Moody’s), and BBB- (Fitch).
The bank is based in Cairo, Egypt.
