Africa’s integration agenda is experiencing a critical and momentous epoch with the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) scheduled for operationalization this year and with the creation of a Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), that are set to be launched by Heads of State at the January Summit in Addis...
Overcoming the barriers for intra-African trade to double in a decade can feel like a Sisyphean task – impossible to complete. But that is the objective of the Boosting Intra-African Trade (BIAT) action plan, which targets to double flows between January 2012 and January 2022. Many individual African nations will not,...
Global trade is unravelling. Most recently, the World Trade Organisation biennial trade talks ended with no new agreements, with the WTO calling on members to do some “soul searching”. But amid the doom and gloom, Africa is proving to be one of the arenas for moving regional trade negotiations forward....
Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has signed a US$200mn three-year term loan facility, to be used for general corporate purposes, including facilitating trade. Mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners on the facility were First Abu Dhabi Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Rand Merchant Bank and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. KfW Ipex-Bank...
The African Development Bank (AfDB) will disburse €66 million (more than $77 million) for the construction of a bridge linking Cameroon and Chad. This was announced by AfDB on Monday, December 11, 2017. The 620m bridge which will link Yagoua (Cameroon) and Bongor (Chad) will be built over a period of 4 years....
Over the past decade Africa has been one of the world's fastest growing economic regions. Starting from a low base, GDP across the continent expanded by 79% between 2006-17. Trade, chiefly commodity exports, powered a large share of this growth. But while trade has been important, it has mainly been...
