The Africa SME Programme supports African local Financial Institutions (FIs) with long term liquidity (Lines of Credit) and with technical assistance to be able to successfully provide relevant financing to local small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and to build larger and good quality SME loan portfolios. The Programme can also support the FIs’ SME clients to ensure better loan application preparations (for example, development of business plans, financial literacy training, etc.). The programme is accessible to banks and to regulated specialized financing houses such as leasing companies and other Non-Bank Financing Institutions, including Micro-Financing Institutions with a SME portfolio. The ultimate beneficiaries of this Programme are local SMEs, seeking adequately priced offerings to finance their business investments and overall business activities. The AfDB does not finance SMEs directly. AfDB supports local financial institutions in such a way that they will increasingly see SMEs as a real and successful market opportunity.
Through the Africa SME Program, the AfDB seeks to address shortcomings in the local market supply and demand for financing between financial institutions and SMEs, so that funding becomes more easily available to the benefit of both the financial institutions and the SMEs.
The scope of instruments of the program might be widened to other instruments in due course, however, for the moment the prevailing instrument includes Lines of Credits.
