Another Caribbean country is expected to join the 12 already partner members with the Afreximbank next month, its outgoing president Professor Benedict Oramah revealed yesterday.
In his farewell speech, Oramah said the array of Caribbean political and business leaders who joined the African nations at the 32nd Afreximbank Annual Meetings in Abuja, Nigeria, spoke volumes regarding the progress the pan-African development institution had made with its outreach “to our friends, brothers and sisters in CARICOM”. It was a day in which other speakers hailed the Caribbean Community’s presence.
His audience at the Transcorp Hotel included Prime Minister of Grenada Dickon Mitchell, Prime Minister of The Bahamas Philip Davis, Secretary General of CARICOM Dr Carla Barnett, regional central bank governors and other regional leaders in the private sectors.
He said that over the last four years, the bank significantly advanced commercial and cultural linkages within Global Africa leading to the 12 partner members, and the other will be on board in “early July”. Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica were two of the major countries not in partnership with the bank.
“The establishment of the Afreximbank Caribbean Office in Barbados, and the subsequent groundbreaking for the construction of the bank’s African Trade Centre in the region, have all taken place. Other notable achievements include the establishment of the Africa-Caribbean Business Council (ACBC) and the launch of the AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF) in 2023, with this year’s edition scheduled to take place in Grenada from July 28 to 29,” he said.
The bank has approved and disbursed millions of United States dollars to The Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana and St Lucia, while in Suriname, Afreximbank is coordinator and a Mandated Lead Arranger of a syndicated US$1.6 billion facility to the state oil company, Staatsolie, for its acquisition of a significant participation in the major oil discovery by Total SA.
In Guyana, the bank is working with the authorities to implement a US$1 billion Local Content Support Facility to boost the domestic impact of oil production. Afreximbank is also working with the Caribbean Development Fund (CDF), the first CARICOM shareholders of the bank, to introduce a resilience and sustainability facility for CARICOM, he said as he thanked “the strong contingent of political and business leaders” from CARICOM in attendance.
Afreximbank, he stated, was a solid institution with total assets of US$43.5 good for Global Africa.
Financial tour
On the penultimate day of the 2025 meetings under the theme Building The Future On Decades Of Resilience
in the same city where he began his association with the bank that would lead to him becoming president and chairman of the board of African Export-Import Bank in 2015, Oramah was also conferred with the Grand Commander of the Niger by President of Nigeria Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He guided the audience on a financial tour of the bank’s disbursements and assistance from pandemic to war, and on a day when the PAPSS credit and debit cards in partnership with Mercury and Discover were launched, allowing holders
to spend their national currencies in the 16 countries where PAPSS is enabled.
Oramah went on to list the challenges and achievements of the bank, referencing the 2020 onset of the turbulent COVID-19 pandemic period and up to May this year, stating that over the last decade US$155 billion was invested in Africa and the Caribbean.
“These must rank among the highest, by any standards. We have collectively, over the past decade, built a solid financial institution that is good for Global Africa,” he said, adding that total assets and guarantees grew more than eight-fold between September 2015 and April 2025, to reach the US$43.5 billion mark.
Total revenues also rose seven-fold, reaching US$3.24 billion from US$408 million, while net income amounted to about US$1 billion last year, an about 700 per cent increase from its level of US$125 million ten years ago.
“Today, Afreximbank has become the trusted institution for mitigating the adverse impacts of economic shocks and the primary source of vital medium- to long-term financing for the African private sector and critical sectors of the African economy. It is important to note that this trajectory of growth and relevance did not start with me, but goes back to my predecessors, who grew the bank multiple-folds.
“That is why, as I look ahead, I see the bank at no less than US$250 billion in assets and guarantees in ten years, when my successor would be stepping down,” Oramah said.
During the pandemic, the challenges included an increased backlog of trade debt payment due to lack of access to the COVID-19 containment materials, and a lack of funding for fertilisers and food imports, he said.
With no help in sight from traditional sources, the African Union sought the support of Afreximbank which worked to set up the African Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP), a digital platform used to achieve pooled procurement of personal protective equipment, test kits, and therapeutics and from which the Caribbean benefited.
During the period, he revealed, the bank disbursed about US$8 billion in support of Africa and when the COVID-19 vaccines arrived, and there was no financing available, Afreximbank provided a US$2 billion facility making it possible for Africa and the CARICOM economies to achieve a pooled procurement of 400 million doses, the first ever of such magnitude by Africa.
Antoinette Connell is in Abuja, Nigeria, sponsored by Afreximbank, covering the bank’s 32nd Annual Meetings.
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