The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) is deploying a suite of practical trade-enabling instruments designed to move the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) beyond ratification and into tangible commercial activity, Dr Gainmore Zanamwe, the Bank’s Director of Trade Facilitation and Investment Promotion has said.
Speaking on the final day of the BHR Africa 2026 Summit in Lomé on the sidelines of the summit, he confirmed that 50 countries have now ratified the agreement and said the bank’s focus had shifted decisively towards implementation and execution.
Central to this push is the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), which he said has been signed by 21 central banks and is now active across over 170 commercial banks. Ghana and Nigeria are already conducting bilateral trade through the platform, a development he said would generate annual cost savings of approximately $5 billion by enabling intra-African trade to be settled in African currencies.
Addressing one of the most persistent barriers to cross-border commerce, he said the Bank has established a $1 billion African Collaborative Transit Guarantee Scheme designed to eliminate the procedural bottlenecks that slow the movement of goods across African borders. “This will allow a container to travel from let’s say Cape Town to Cairo under a single, technology-enabled transit bond. A digital platform is currently being developed in partnership with the AfCFTA Secretariat and is expected to be operational by 2027. Afreximbank has already piloted the scheme within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC), where bonds exceeding $185 million have been issued in the EAC region alone,” he said.
He added that the Bank is also driving the establishment of a new export trading company, developed jointly with ARISE Integrated Industrial Platforms and the AfCFTA Secretariat, and mandated by the African Union Summit to support small and medium enterprises and smallholder farmers who lack the capacity to navigate export markets independently. He described the initiative as a direct response to the institutional failures visible in informal cross-border trade, where individual traders move goods in personal luggage across borders rather than through organised commercial channels.
The trading company will function as an aggregator, consolidating produce from multiple SMEs, handling branding, logistics and market intelligence, and channelling goods into industrial parks for value addition before distribution under the AfCFTA framework. “Most MSMEs are actually not export-ready, or they don’t have the capability to deal with the complex rules of origin, FX and all these other complexities. But they can work through the trading company as indirect exporters. All they need to do is to actually identify what they are good at. They work with the trading company, which will aggregate the products. After aggregating the products, they are branded and logistics required to move the goods from the centres where these SMEs are producing them to the markets under the AFCFTA,” he said.
He cited Malawian rice as a concrete illustration, a commodity with strong demand potential in the Nigerian market that could be captured through structured aggregation and trade facilitation, rather than left to informal networks. The model he said, is designed to complement, not compete with, established private trading entities. “Afreximbank maintains existing relationships with major players including the Export Trading Group (ETG) and Olam, which will continue operating independently. The Bank’s trading company initiative is distinct in its mandate to drive AfCFTA-specific trade flows and its integration with the industrial park strategy being advanced through the ARISE platform, ensuring that raw and agricultural commodities are processed and value-added on the continent before reaching end/export markets,” he said.
Confirming that preparations are well advanced for the Intra-Africa Trade Fair (IATF) 2027, scheduled to be held in Lagos, he said the target is at least $50 billion in trade and business deals as well as 100,000 participants at the event. “With the backing of Dr Jumoke Oduwole and the support of IATF Advisory Council Chairperson, Olusegun Obasanjo, IATF 2027 is positioned as the pre-eminent marketplace for the AfCFTA, a platform where governments and the private sector converge to give commercial substance to the continent’s largest trade agreement. “We will no longer wait for FX to determine our trading and markets. We are going to be using African currencies to support intra-African trade under the AfCFTA. IATF, remember, is actually the platform, the marketplace for the AfCFTA,” he said.
