"Where Africa Comes to Stay Informed."
US Edition
"Where Africa Comes to Stay Informed."
The African Export-Import Bank has committed $500 million to the Africa Trading and Distribution Company under a Global Credit Facility built to move commodities more freely within the continent and out to overseas buyers. Money from the line will go into buying and pooling African goods, and into the logistics, haulage, storage and distribution work that surrounds each trade.
Afreximbank made the deal public in a Monday statement from Vincent Musumba, who handles communications and events at the bank. The statement said ATDC gains extra trade-finance headroom to carry out and grow qualifying trading and distribution deals across African markets.
The bank framed the arrangement as more than transaction-by-transaction funding. It is meant to help ATDC lay down durable trade corridors and widen its reach into dependable sourcing and distribution channels on the continent. “It will also support commercially sustainable trade flows, greater processing of African commodities and increased regional availability of raw materials, inputs and value-added products,” the bank said.
Kanayo Awani, the bank’s Executive Vice President for Intra-African Trade and Export Development, cast the facility as evidence of Afreximbank’s push to build the plumbing the African Continental Free Trade Area needs to work. In her view the funding should move African-made goods around the continent more efficiently, thicken regional value chains and open wider markets to local manufacturers and producers. She also expects it to lift manufactured exports and make African products harder to beat on price and quality abroad.
Stewart Makura, who runs ATDC as Chief Executive Officer, argued that trade systems linking producers, manufacturers, processors and buyers are central to reshaping Africa’s economy. The facility, he said, gives his company more room to pool supply, raise working capital and shift goods faster through regional value chains. “Together with Afreximbank, we will support stronger supply chains, value addition, import substitution and intra-African trade,” Makura said.
ATDC runs as a pan-African trading platform set up to speed industrialization, push more processing onto the continent and knit African economies closer together. Its operations sit in Egypt, Nigeria, Malawi and Zimbabwe, where it works on opening market access, closing gaps in trade intelligence and helping put AfCFTA into practice.
The deal lands while trade between African countries keeps climbing. Afreximbank’s most recent trade report puts that figure at $213.8 billion for 2025, up 5.47% from $202.7 billion a year earlier — a gain of $11.1 billion over the twelve months, which the bank reads as a sign of busier commerce and tighter regional integration.
Stronger output in Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia drove much of that increase, according to the bank. South Africa again supplied the largest share of intra-African trade, and Côte d’Ivoire held its position as a key conduit for commerce across West Africa.
Separately, the bank posted first-half 2026 net income of $534.7 million, a 30% jump on the $412.7 million it booked over the same stretch of 2025. Afreximbank credited fatter net interest income plus higher fee and commission receipts as its lending and trade-finance book expanded.
Total assets and contingencies for the Group reached $52.3 billion by mid-year, 7.8% above the $48.5 billion carried at the close of 2025. Net loans and advances climbed 5.7% to $35.4 billion, tracking further growth in trade and development lending across the continent.
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