Trade: a $500 million facility to streamline African trade
(Ecofin Agency) - While financing remains an obstacle to the development of intra-African trade, this operation aims to strengthen ATDC's capacities to group goods and transport them to different regional markets.
Afreximbank and Africa Trading and Distribution Company (ATDC), a pan-African trading and distribution platform, entered into a $500 million credit facility on Monday September 21 to support trading and distribution operations in Africa and international markets.
The envelope will be used to cover the financing needs linked to the different stages of the commercial chain, from the purchase and aggregation of goods to their transport, storage and distribution. The credits will be repaid using income generated from the sale of the financed products. The ATDC will thus be able to group products from different suppliers, build up marketable volumes and transport them to other markets.
Present in Egypt, Nigeria, Malawi and Zimbabwe, the platform also intends to develop trade corridors connecting several African markets. “Taking full advantage of Africa’s trade potential requires reliable systems that can connect producers, processors, manufacturers and markets,” said Stewart Makura, its chief executive.
The operation comes at a time when access to financing remains an obstacle to the development of intra-African trade. According to Afreximbank's African Trade Report 2025, the continent faces an annual trade finance gap of around $100 billion, which notably constitutes an obstacle to the participation of SMEs in regional value chains. At the same time, trade between African countries reached $220.3 billion in 2024, up 12.4% year-on-year. However, they represented only 14.4% of the continent's formal trade, according to the same report.
Connecting African resources to markets
For Afreximbank, this operation should contribute to better connecting African resources to markets and regional processing capacities, in particular by facilitating companies' access to trade financing. It comes in a context of increasing trade in goods on the continent. In 2024, African merchandise trade will reach around $1.5 trillion, up 13.9% year-on-year. In detail, exports increased by 21%, to $758 billion, while imports increased by 7.6%, to $769 billion.
Strengthening financing mechanisms therefore constitutes a challenge to support this dynamic and encourage greater circulation of products between African markets. The facility granted to ATDC is, as such, part of Afreximbank's broader trade financing strategy. The bank says it has disbursed $17.5 billion in trade financing in 2024 and is targeting $40 billion in intra-African trade financing in 2026.
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