Afreximbank has published Volume 10, Issue 1 of its Trade and Development Finance Brief, examining the structural fault lines in Africa’s trade and investment landscape amid what it describes as an increasingly uncertain global environment.
The Cairo-headquartered multilateral development bank argues that the continent’s export base remains heavily concentrated in raw materials, including agricultural commodities, oil, gas and minerals, while imports skew sharply towards manufactured goods and machinery. That configuration, the Brief says, leaves many African economies vulnerable to commodity price volatility, geopolitical disruption and global supply chain shocks, all of which have intensified since 2022.
AfCFTA as the structural fix
The African Continental Free Trade Area sits at the centre of the bank’s proposed response. The Brief projects that intra-African exports could rise by more than 20 per cent within a decade as AfCFTA implementation advances, citing the agreement’s potential to integrate fragmented markets, expand industrial output and strengthen regional value chains. Alongside the African Union’s Agenda 2063 framework, AfCFTA is positioned as a practical route to reducing the continent’s dependence on unfavourable terms of trade.
Afreximbank flags its own infrastructure as part of the enablement layer. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), adopted by the African Union as the payment platform underpinning AfCFTA, is cited alongside the US$10billion AfCFTA Adjustment Fund, the Intra-African Trade Fair, the Border Markets Initiative and the Collaborative Transit Guarantee Scheme. Together, these represent the bank’s operational bet that institutional scaffolding, not just policy aspiration, is what converts a trade agreement into transaction flows.
Dr. Yemi Kale, group chief economist and managing Ddrector of Research, said: “The Brief points to Afreximbank initiatives such as the Intra-African Trade Fair, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, the AfCFTA Adjustment Fund, the Border Markets Initiative and the Collaborative Transit Guarantee Scheme as part of the wider effort to strengthen Africa’s trade and investment ecosystem.”
Infrastructure, finance and fintech
Beyond the trade agreement, the Brief identifies five enabling conditions that it says require coordinated action: trade-enabling infrastructure (energy, transport, ports and logistics), regulatory coherence, institutional strengthening, SME access to finance, and digital financial technologies. The fintech reference is pointed. The Brief notes that fintech is contributing to growth in domestic investment across African economies, a signal that mobile payments, digital lending rails and cross-border settlement platforms are being tracked not just as consumer products but as industrial-policy inputs.
The investment picture is mixed. Foreign direct investment continues to outpace domestic capital formation, and FDI flows are unevenly distributed, with Eastern and Southern Africa attracting a disproportionately larger share than Western and Central Africa.
Market context
PAPSS is the most commercially significant of Afreximbank’s cited initiatives for a fintech audience. The system is designed to allow cross-border payments in local African currencies, bypassing the US dollar correspondent banking chain that currently adds cost and settlement friction to intra-African trade. Several African central banks have signed on, and the system’s governance sits with the AU, giving it a multilateral legitimacy that commercial payment networks lack.
The broader trade finance gap in Africa is well documented: estimates have consistently placed the annual shortfall at between $80billion and $120billion, driven by correspondent banking retrenchment, high collateral requirements and thin credit histories for smaller exporters. Any structural progress on AfCFTA implementation will require that gap to narrow, which is why the Brief’s call for expanded trade finance sits alongside, rather than separate from, the infrastructure and regulatory agenda.
The bank’s total assets and contingencies stood at over US$48.5billion at end-December 2025, giving it balance-sheet weight to back the commitments it describes.
The post Afreximbank Brief Flags AfCFTA as Key to Africa Trade Resilience appeared first on The Fintech Times.
