ACCRA, Oct. 3 — Africa’s Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) is supporting efforts to build strong industrial and export processing capacity across the continent to drive trade-led development and advance the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the bank’s president said Thursday.
Benedict Oramah, president of Afreximbank, made the remarks in a keynote lecture at the AfCFTA Secretariat in Accra, the Ghanaian capital.
“Trade-led development in Africa cannot rely solely on trading the same primary commodities. It must entail moving up the value chain,” Oramah said, noting that Africa needs to develop industries such as automotive manufacturing through intra-regional partnerships to seize opportunities under the AfCFTA.
He also noted that Afreximbank has aligned its financing to support industrialization and export growth, facilitating more than 50 industrial projects across all five regions of Africa in 2024 alone, including two major industrial parks in West Africa.
On the automotive sector, Oramah underscored that no single African country has the market size to sustain a large industry, making regional collaboration essential.
The official added that Afreximbank’s work with the AfCFTA is a model of how a financial institution could directly underpin a policy initiative.
On his part, Wamkele Mene, secretary-general of AfCFTA, said the partnership with Afreximbank over the past five years has been enduring and impactful, helping move the initiative from vision to implementation.
“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. (Xinhua)
