News Release: Mauritius To Host Afreximbank’s Structured Trade Finance Training

Banks and other financial institutions involved in financing trade in Africa will gather in Mauritius from 21 to 24 November for a seminar organized by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to enhance Africa’s capacity to take advantage of opportunities offered by structured trade finance to boost trade in the face of challenging global economic environment of contracting demand and creeping protectionism.

According to information released by the Bank, Rameswurlall Basant Roi, Governor of the Central Bank of Mauritius, will chair the opening ceremony. He will be joined by Kee Chong Li Kwong Wing, Chairman of State Bank of Bank Mauritius (SBM), Caroline Abel, Governor of the Central Bank of Seychelles, and Kutoane Kutoane, Chief Executive Officer of the Export Credit Insurance Corporation of South Africa.

The Afreximbank 2016 Annual Structured Trade Finance Seminar will expose the more that 100 trade finance practitioners expected to attend to the fundamentals of structured trade finance.

Afreximbank President Dr. Benedict Oramah said in Cairo today that the organization of the seminar was motivated by the Bank’s goal of “strengthening the capacity of its partners and clients in understanding trade and trade related project financing issues as they affect Africa,”   particularly given the widening trade financing gap and the challenge of increasing the continent’s share of global trade.

The President added that the seminar would provide “a platform for African bankers and other trade finance practitioners to meet and network, thereby making a major contribution in boosting African trade,” pointing out that many participants had gone on to successfully meet client trade finance needs by tapping into such contacts to facilitate cross-border business transactions.

Speakers in this year’s seminar and workshops will include leading experts from some of the world’s top financial institutions, academic institutions and firms, as well as representatives from Afreximbank, the Central Bank of Mauritius, SBM, the Central Bank of Seychelles, Standard Chartered Bank, Mauritius Banker’s Association and the Loans Market Association.

Senior executives representing African banks and financial institutions, regulatory institutions, hedge funds, Africa country funds and venture capital institutions, corporate entities engaged in trade, manufacturing and privatized infrastructure projects, Afreximbank’s trade finance and project finance intermediaries, African law firms and insurance firms are among participants expected at this year’s seminar. According to Afreximbank, they will be joined by middle to senior level international professionals from Africa and beyond.

The four-day training will start with the Structured Trade Finance Seminar on 21 and 22 November, followed by a workshop on agency and syndications, focusing on the role of the Loan Market Association, on 23 November. A second workshop, titled “Making factoring work for Africa,” will take place on 24 November, with the objective of raising awareness of factoring as an alternative trade finance tool in Africa.

The 2016 Trade Finance Seminar and Workshops, the 16^th in the annual series, is part of Afreximbank’s effort to prepare African banks and financial institutions to meet the trade finance needs of the continent and is being organised in co-operation with the Central Bank of Mauritius and SBM.

Obi Emekekwue

Afreximbank External Communications