African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) on 2 February 2023 signed a Joint Project Preparation Facility (JPPF) Framework Agreement with the African Union Development Agency – NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD). The signing ceremony took place on the sidelines of the second Dakar financing Summit for Infrastructure Development (DFS-2).

The framework agreement will enable Afreximbank and AUDA-NEPAD to initiate transactions for the JPPF – accelerating the mobilization of funds. Crucially, the agreement enables Afreximbank and AUDA-NEPAD to de-risk sectors and markets, thereby forging a clear path for projects towards bankability. As bankability isattained, private capital can be channeled into historically neglected markets, delivering economic growth and dynamic private sector ecosystems.

Specifically, the JPPF will encourage the development of a steady stream of market-ready projects in various sectors such as energy, transport & logistics, platforms (such as special economic zones and industrial parks), manufacturing, agro-processing, solid minerals, and services. Additionally, the facility will support continental priority projects under the AUDA-NEPAD’s Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) as well as projects with significant potential to support intra-African trade.

Furthermore, the facilitation of private capital investment in these key markets will promote export development and industrialization as well as Intra-African Trade, advancing the Bank’s founding mandate.

This agreement is significant for AUDA-NEPAD given its mandate to coordinate the implementation of regional and continental priority programmes in line with the African Agenda for development. At an organisation level, AUDA-NEPAD will benefit from  Afreximbank’s training programme that will upskill AUDA-NEPAD staff on project preparation activities. This will boost the organisation’s facility for infrastructure project preparation and strengthen the Service Delivery Mechanism (SDM).

Speaking at the opening of the Summit, the CEO of AUDA-NEPAD, Ms Nardos Bekele-Thomas highlighted that:

“… this agreement will complement our existing Service Delivery Mechanism and the NEPAD IPPF with the African Development Bank, and the African Infrastructure Guarantee Mechanism (AIGM) and Co-Guarantee platform that we have launched with AFDB,TDB, ISDB, DBSA, and other development finance partners.”

Prof. Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Afreximbank, commented that:

“The execution of this framework agreement with AUDA-NEPAD is a testament to the resolve of two African institutions to address the investment and infrastructure gap on the continent – characterized by the limited supply of bankable projects. We are convinced that recent global economic shocks have underlined the necessity for African countries to mobilize private sector resources in order to meet their investment and infrastructure needs and improve competitiveness and productivity while spurring economic growth. In this respect, our joint intervention in the project preparation space is timely and urgent: facilitating the advancement of projects to investment-readiness by providing technical and financial support to ultimately attract a flow of investments into priority sectors on this great continent.”