BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of the Congo, May 28, 2026/APO Group/ –The African Development Bank Group (www.AfDB.org) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday launched the Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Roadmap for Africa to channel private investment into Africa’s most fragile economies.

 

The HRI Roadmap for Africa sets out a coordinated, country-led approach to mobilising commercial and catalytic capital in underserved frontier markets and transition states, regions where the investment gap is most acute and the enabling conditions for private investment have historically been weakest.

The roadmap’s development responds to a structural paradox at the heart of Africa’s financing challenge: the continent faces an annual development financing gap of about $400 billion. Despite having 17 percent of the world’s population, Africa attracts only 3.5 percent of global foreign direct investment and less than 2 percent of global venture capital. Shifting geopolitical dynamics and contracting official development assistance environment have further intensified the urgency. Pilots are already underway in Liberia, Somalia, Mozambique, and Djibouti.

In keynote remarks, African Development Bank Group Senior Vice President Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, speaking on behalf of President Dr Sidi Ould Tah, underscored the urgency of the moment. “The time for a paradigm shift, from aid dependency to investment-led development, is now. The HRI Roadmap creates that foundation. It clarifies roles. It sequences interventions. It positions public and development finance where it belongs: as a catalyst, not a substitute.”

Ms. Sheba Crocker, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum; said: “The world’s most vulnerable communities deserve more than relief — they deserve investment in the businesses and economies that allow them to thrive on their own terms. Built on the global HRI initiative and backed by more than 100 partners, this Roadmap reflects our determination to move beyond fragmentation and toward the coordinated, investment-led approaches that Africa’s frontier markets urgently require.”

Acting Vice President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, Dr Abdul Kamara, moderated a panel discussion on Catalysing Investment in Africa’s Frontier Markets that followed the high-level remarks. The panellists were WEF MD Sheba Crocker; Bihi Iman Egeh, Minister of Finance of Somalia; Chris Bold, Director, International Financial Institutions Department at the U.K’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO); and Sara Mbago-Bhunu, Director, East and Southern Africa Division, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Minister Egeh argued that Somalia does not lack entrepreneurship but suffers from de-risking gaps and exclusion from correspondent banking. Mbago-Bhunu drew on examples from IFAD’s work with smallholder farmers– including a digital-voucher scheme with Kenyan commercial banks– to make the case that rural and peri-urban implementation will require integrated financial, digital and infrastructure tools, not isolated interventions. Bold explained that FCDO is steering its development finance institutions toward fragile states that rely on concessional capital. He pointed to Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile money system as proof that creating new markets depends as much on regulatory reform as on capital.

Mr. Bumi Camara, African Development Bank Chief Fragility and Resilience Economist, made a presentation on the roadmap.https://apo-opa.co/3PM4dKI

The Roadmap, which embeds climate resilience and gender inclusion as core pillars, aligns with the African Development Bank’s Four Cardinal Points strategic compass as well as the New African Financial Architecture for Development (NAFAD), endorsed through the Abidjan Consensus in April 2026. It also aligns with the Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) — which to date has disbursed $1.33 billion to women-led businesses across 45 countries.

Click to download a copy of the HRI Roadmap (https://apo-opa.co/4veVCz4)

BRAZZAVILLE, Congo (Republic of the), May 28, 2026/APO Group/ –The fifth edition of the African Development Bank’s (www.AfDB.org) Trade Finance Report paints a picture of resilient African financial institutions in the post Covid-19 years, despite a challenging global environment.

 

Download Report: https://apo-opa.co/4uNLXj6

The 2025 Trade Finance Report, which provides an updated assessment of Africa’s trade finance landscape over the 2020–2024 period following the COVID-19 pandemic, was released on Wednesday, during the Bank Group’s 2026 Annual Meetings, taking place in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

The report examines trade finance from a bank-intermediation perspective, filling important knowledge gaps while introducing new dimensions such as digitalization and environmental sustainability. It also, for the first time, quantifies the contribution of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) to trade finance on the continent.

Presenting the report, Anthony Simpasa, Director of the Macroeconomic Policy, Forecasting and Research Department at the African Development Bank, said unmet demand for trade finance declined by nearly 10% between 2019 and 2024, supported by strong interventions from multilateral development banks, governments, export credit agencies, and global banks. These interventions were critical in sustaining trade flows, with estimates suggesting that, in the absence of DFI support, the annual trade finance gap could have exceeded $100 billion during the 2020-2024 period.

“Renewed geopolitical tensions and disruptions to global supply chains and trade flows could reverse post-pandemic progress in narrowing the trade finance gap. For instance, tighter correspondent risk appetite could widen the trade finance gap to $86.6-$102.6 billion by 2027 under a moderate to severe scenario. This is at least 17.7 % above the 2024 level, potentially erasing a decade of gains,” Simpasa cautioned.

The report launch event was attended by policymakers, private-sector leaders, Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), Financial Institutions, and trade finance experts from across the continent.

Some highlights of the report:

• The unmet demand for trade finance in Africa ranged from $74 billion to $92 billion in 2024. The estimated gap of $ 74 billion represents 5.4% of the region’s total merchandise trade value in 2024.
• African trade remains underserved by commercial banks. Over the five years of the study, commercial banks intermediated an average of 23% of Africa’s total trade, down from 40% during 2011-19.
• Between 2020 and 2024, intra-African trade accounted for 34% of total bank-intermediated trade, representing an 89 percent increase above pre-pandemic levels (2011-2019).
• Foreign exchange liquidity shortages have become the primary barrier limiting banks’ growth in trade finance. About 36% of banks cited limited foreign exchange liquidity as the primary constraint to their trade finance growth between 2020 and 2024, compared with 18% in the 2015-2019 period.
• The adoption of digital trade finance solutions by banks remains low, primarily due to high implementation costs and inadequate technological infrastructure. Only 28% of the banks surveyed reported having adopted digital tools or platforms for their trade finance operations.

In a short panel discussion following the launch, Didier Acouetey, Senior Advisor to African Development Bank President Sidi Ould Tah for the Private Sector, Francisca Tatchouop Belobe, Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Tourism, Industry and Minerals for the  African Union Commission, Admassu Tadesse, Group President and Managing Director, Trade and Development Bank; and Mehdi Tanani, Regional Director for Central Africa, Proparco, discussed the report’s findings, noting opportunities and challenges to unlocking sustainable bank-intermediated trade finance in Africa.

Although trade finance remains a major constraint for most of Africa, exciting innovations are gaining ground, such as digitization, guarantees and asset management initiatives to expand the trade finance asset class and related offerings to the market, Tadesse said. “This should be advanced further by new systemic initiatives such as New African Financial Architecture for Development (NAFAD) and related thrusts such as derisking and smart partnerships that should multiply the impact of African capital and unlock more global capital,” he added.

“NAFAD gives us, for the first time, a coherent continental framework to close the trade finance gap — not project by project, but systemically. That is the shift that changes everything for African SMEs,” Acouetey noted.

Commissioner Belobe called for eliminating the ‘missing middle’ in African banking. “SMEs are too large for microfinance, too small for corporate banking, but far too commercially important to be left outside the trade finance system. It is time for commercial banks to treat SME trade finance as a deliberate, core business line, not a residual activity,” he said.

“Africa will not close its trade finance gap by adding constraints, but by building a more resilient, more digital, and more sustainable trade finance ecosystem — one that protects SMEs against global shocks while accelerating the continent’s economic integration,” Tanani said.

The African Development Bank and other DFIs have played a significant role in reducing the trade finance gap in Africa. Development finance institutions facilitated about $32 billion in trade finance annually between 2020 and 2024, accounting for about 3% of Africa’s total merchandise trade on average over the same period.

The African Development Bank’s Trade Finance Program was established in 2013, with an inaugural survey conducted in 2014. Since 2014, AfDB has produced 4 periodic surveys, including two country-specific reports on Kenya and Tanzania.

Read the full report here https://apo-opa.co/4uNLXj6.

BRAZZAVILLE, Congo (Republic of the), May 28, 2026/APO Group/ —

• Announcement made on first day of African Development Bank’s Annual Meetings in Brazzaville
• “The generation of 1963 gave us political agency; our responsibility now is to strengthen Africa’s collective agency,” Sidi Ould Tah

 

African leaders attending the African Development Bank Group’s (www.AfDB.org) 2026 Annual Meetings in Brazzaville on Monday marked Africa Day with the host, President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, announcing that the Republic of the Congo would waive visa requirements for all African nationals from next year.

The announcement, marking another significant step towards continental integration, drew prolonged applause from thousands of delegates attending the meetings taking place at the Kintele Conference Centre.

“As from the first of January 2027, nationals of all African countries will have visa-free access and will no longer need a visa to come to Congo,” he said, urging countries to move beyond “selfishness and nationalism” and deepen regional integration through practical implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

The commemoration brought together African heads of state and government, ministers, diplomats, investors, development partners, civil society representatives, youth leaders, and private-sector stakeholders united around Africa’s regional integration and transformation agenda.

Observed annually on 25 May, Africa Day commemorates the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa in 1963, which later evolved into the African Union. This year’s celebration is aligned with the African Union’s 2026 theme, “Assuring Sustainable Water Availability and Safe Sanitation Systems to Achieve the Goals of Agenda 2063.”

President Sassou-Nguesso called for increased investments to ensure sustainable development, and accelerated action to improve water security and access to sanitation across Africa.

The Congolese leader stressed that no African state could independently finance the infrastructure needed to transform the continent, highlighting the need for collective investment in roads, railways, airports, ports, and energy systems.

President Sassou-Nguesso also renewed calls for global mobilisation around ecosystem restoration and reforestation, describing Africa’s forests as “a second green lung of humanity” and underscoring the continent’s role in addressing climate change.

In his statement, the President of the African Development Bank Group, Dr Sidi Ould Tah, stressed the need for deeper continental integration, stronger African institutions, and renewed confidence in Africa’s ability to shape its own future amid mounting global uncertainty.

Describing Africa Day as “a dialogue of peace, solidarity and resilience,” Dr Ould Tah reiterated that Africa’s future depended on transforming its abundant natural resources into drivers of dignity and prosperity.

“Too often Africa is described in terms of what it lacks,” he said. “But if we focus only on what Africa does not have, we fail to see what it already possesses.”

He said Africa must strengthen its “collective agency” through deeper regional integration, stronger continental institutions, and a new African financing architecture capable of supporting long-term development ambitions.

“The generation of 1963 gave us political agency,” Ould Tah said. “Our responsibility now is to strengthen Africa’s collective agency through deeper integration, stronger institutions, and inward confidence in our ability to build our future together.”

In remarks delivered via video link, African Union Chairperson and President of Burundi, Évariste Ndayishimiye, called for greater African solidarity, accelerated continental integration, and reforms to global governance systems to better reflect Africa’s growing role in world affairs.

Representing the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Selma Malika Haddadi, Deputy Chairperson of the Commission said the celebration of Africa Day provided an opportunity to pay tribute to the African Development Bank Group for its critical role as the continent’s premier development financier.

“For decades, the African Development Bank has demonstrated that an Africa that invests in itself is an Africa that strengthens its economic sovereignty, its resilience, and its ability to take control of its own development,” she stated.

The programme, moderated by veteran Cameroonian journalist Denise Epoté, also showcased the grandeur of African art and culture brought to life by Congolese dancers and the evocative poetic recitations of Mariusca and Maître Muleck.

The 2026 Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank Group are being held in Brazzaville under the theme “Mobilising Africa’s Development Financing at Scale in a Fragmented World.”