The European arm of Russia’s VTB Bank has signed an agreement with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) as part of plans to expand trade finance activities in Africa. The agreement allows VTB to use a wide range of Afreximbank trade finance products, supporting Russian exporters seeking to enter the African

CDC Group, the UK’s development finance institution (DFI), is providing Absa Group with a US$75mn funded and unfunded facility which will be used for onlending to other banks across Africa and to expand Absa’s network of local banks. It is hoped that the risk-sharing facility – one of CDC’s largest

Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA), a pan-African initiative to bridge the US$42bn financing gap facing women on the continent, is set to receive a US$251mn investment from the G7 countries. AFAWA is a joint initiative of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Guarantee Fund (AGF),

Standard Bank has launched a US$500mn syndicated loan facility for activities including trade finance. The loan, which will have a 36-month tenor, will be used for general corporate purposes including trade finance and be launched to a selected group of international financial institutions, who have not been named. Citi, Industrial

Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (Nexi), Japan’s export credit agency, has inked partnership agreements with three international financial institutions to accelerate trade and investment in Africa by Japanese companies. The deals were struck with the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investments and Export Credit (ICIEC)

Mastercard Foundation and the International Finance Corporation have struck a partnership to expand digital financial inclusion in Africa. A digital study released by the IFC and MasterCard, titled ‘Aligning expectations: The business case for digital financial services’, highlighted a set of best practice financial modelling benchmarks for agent banking and