Africans must solve Africa’s challenges, says Afreximbank boss
THE MYR IADS OF CHALLENG ES FACING Africa must be solved by Africans themselves, Benedict Oramah, president and chairman, Board of Directors of African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), has said.
Oramah spoke at the opening of the 29th Afreximbank annual meetings (AAM2022) in Cairo, Egypt.
“Africa’s problems are for Africans to solve,” Oramah said.
He said notwithstanding the increased frequency of crises, Africa must not lose sight of the fundamental challenges it must resolve.
“We can no longer accept that after 60 years of independence, Africa remains financially and economically fragmented. We can no longer continue to espouse the benefits of an integrated continent but do little to achieve it,” he said.
The meetings, themed “Realizing the AfCFTA Potential in the Post-Covid-19 Era by Leveraging the Power of the Youth”, held 15-18 June, 2022.
Speaking at the St. Regis Alamsa Convention Centre in Egypt’s new administrative capital, Oramah said Afreximbank had intervened to help the continent implement African solutions during challenging times, some with the support of other development partners and African institutions.
He said the pan-African multilateral financial institution debunked the notion that Africa cannot rise again through the creation of the African Vaccine Trust (AVAT), which enabled African Union (AU) member states to procure 400 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic through the AU’s Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT).
“We stand on the pedestal of the work done here to say that we can if we dare,” Oramah said.
He complimented the resilience of the continent during the challenging times brought about by the pandemic, saying that positive stories emanating from particular countries like Egypt, which had invested over $62 billion over the past six years in massive infrastructural transformation, were a manifestation of the continent’s ability to achieve whatever it desired for its people.
Africa recorded a surprise speedy economic recovery from the pandemic in 2021. IMF has maintained its growth expectations for Africa, while other parts of the world have suffered sharp downward revisions. Africa’s growth forecast for 2022 points to continued fortitude even in the face of heightening inflationary pressures and geopolitical risks, with the continent’s GDP projected to expand by around 3.9 percent this 2022, slightly less than the Fund’s earlier forecasts of around 4.3 percent.
Also, the revised growth forecasts show that the economic expansion of 16 countries (representing around 30 percent of all African naalready tions) will exceed 5 percent in 2022, with the asymmetric nature of the commodity price shock emerging as a major growth accelerator for some of the largest economies across the region.
But the continent faces new challenges in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis, including difficulties in accessing grains, fertilisers and petroleum products.
Oramah said Afreximbank stepped in with $4 billion Ukraine Crisis Adjustment Trade Finance Programme for Africa (UKAFPA) to help countries to contain the short-term impacts of the crisis.
He appealed for increased commitment to the bank by its shareholders, saying that a stronger Afreximbank could be one of the solid pillars on which Africa’s development could be built.
He announced that Afreximbank, through its intra-African trade division, had by 2021 disbursed about $20 billion in support of intra-African trade and investments, with plans to disburse a further $40 billion during the next five years. That had raised the intra-African trade share of the bank’s portfolio from 3 percent in 2016 to about 27 percent in 2021, and had enabled African contractors to bid for African infrastructure-related projects.