Africa faces major challenges in addressing long-standing trade-financing obstacles. It has been a long journey. As we emerged from the pandemic, businesses across the continent were hit by the effects of the war between Russia and Ukraine, not least because many African countries are dependent on grain and fertilizer imports from there. This was particularly damaging from a commodity point of view. It led to inflation and central banks in turn responded by tightening policies and increasing rates, which in turn impacted the cost of financing.

However, we clearly see great opportunity for Africa to rise. The African Union 2062 agenda for instance makes clear that Africa must become more self-sufficient. Rather than importing grains, for example, we should cultivate them here in Africa, where we have the most arable land in the world.

One of the negative effects of Africa’s trade finance gap has been on the SME sector. In Africa, SMEs contribute close to 90% of the business landscape, yet a recent study by the African Development Bank shows that just 28% of the continent’s trade finance is devoted to this huge sector. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that if a business is not registered, then it typically cannot have access to a bank account. This means that when it comes to financing, it’s extremely difficult for banks to carry out the right due diligence that would enable them to grant financing. To address this, at Ecobank we are making a concerted effort to encourage SMEs to register and thus improve on capacity, and Ecobank Academy has trained a great many of them in such fields as accounting and financial governance across sub-Saharan Africa.

Also hampering the evolution of Africa’s SMEs has been gender imbalance, with women who make up a large proportion of SME owners greatly challenged when trying to access funding. Ecobank is helping to boost the trend towards ensuring women are more and better educated and, as a result, more forthcoming when it comes to business requirements. We launched an initiative called Ellevate, aimed at businesses that are owned by women, managed by women, or selling products useful for women. We have also built up risk-acceptance criteria that enable us to lend to women on more favourable terms.

This all helps contribute to growth in intra-Africa trade, supported by the endeavours of the African Continental free Trade Agreement. The AfCFTA last year forecast that intra-Africa trade would rise 25% by 2035 and I consider a sizable rise to be very much in sight. When African countries trade within themselves, they tend to add more value, resulting in a shift from exporting raw commodities with very low value addition to being able to add value before exporting and thus raise their Africa share of global trade.

The free trade area has done extraordinarily well in persuading all the states to sign, ratify and now implement the free trade agreement with tangible results, all within the space of five years. Furthermore the AfCFTA secretariat has done a great job in harnessing all the continent’s force to achieve the right focus on this key initiative.

On top of all the education it is providing, AfCFTA has launched its Guided Trade Initiative, with pilots underway in Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania and Tunisia. We have already seen a growth in trade between these countries, as they find or source the right products within the continent.

The key to taking advantage of free trade is one of fostering intra-Africa trade, enabling its countries to add value and to boost their own production. The added value will come off the back of improvements in manufacturing. Better industrialisation will therefore form part of an overarching effect.

When Ecobank was formed 35 years ago, our founding fathers’ vision was to foster economic development through financial integration of African countries. We have since built on that vision. We now have the most extensive network covering cities in 33 countries and are actively supporting this transformation. For example, we recently unveiled our single-market trade hub to help African SMEs grow under the AfCFTA and to bring great potential benefits to African business and consumers. We’ve been able to deploy our payment solution and our trade solution from trade services to trade finance.

In the process, as we built up our customer base, we found ourselves at a crossroad as a Pan-African bank. Launching our single market trade hub is integral to our quest to improve intra-Africa trade. Through its matchmaking module, the platform allows market expansion and visibility, with a view to bringing all these businesses together in a digital platform and creating a new marketplace.

Supported by our widely spread business customer base and our payment capabilities, our goal is to continue to help enable Africa to rise by enabling our clients and non-clients to trade and elicit demand from other businesses across the continent. The future for intra-Africa trade is bright.