Africa

This North Africa Economic Outlook by the African Development Bank (covering Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia) examines the macroeconomic performance of the region and the outlook for 2018 and 2019 and explores the relationship between food security and rural poverty. Included in the report are details about finance for small and medium-size enterprises. Excerpts are below.

The Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private sector (ICD) and Afriland First Group - a SME Finance Forum member - Banque Islamique du Senegal, EBID, BSIC Mali and Coris Bank Mali signed a Line of financing agreements for a Euro 45 million, Euro 50 Million, Euro 25 Million, Euro 9 Million and Euro 6 Million respectively.

OraGroup, the holding company of the African banking group Orabank, has received EUR 40 million following the financing agreement signed with the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) - a SME Finance Forum member - in December 2017. These funds will enable Oragroup, through its subsidiary and branches in Côte d'Ivoire, Togo and Gabon, to finance, with the benefit of exclusivity, eligible projects from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in member countries of the ICD.

The triad of entrepreneurship, self-employment, and financial inclusion underpins policy and development interventions meant to address the youth employment challenge in Africa. Youth savings groups are being widely promoted as a first step toward financial inclusion and economic empowerment. This article reports on the links between income-generating activities of 57 members of youth savings groups in Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Ghana, and their membership in savings groups.

SME Finance Forum member Diamond Bank has been appointed as a Forum Member Adviser to the World Economic Forum (“WEF”). The Forum aims to shape global, regional and industry agendas to deliver WEF’s mission of improving the state of the world.

Diamond is the first Nigerian company and only the second African company to become a World Economic Forum Adviser. Membership is on an invitation only basis and is extended only to the most dynamic businesses who are using tech-driven disruption to drive growth.

Recent World Bank investment climate surveys find that the top two constraints for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Africa are access to finance and access to energy. Given that SMEs contribute disproportionately to boosting job creation, GDP, and exports, addressing these two constraints is critical to promoting economic development on the continent.
 
A new project combining skills across the World Bank Group and IFC is taking advantage of disruptive advances in the energy and finance sectors to address these longstanding challenges for SMEs.
 

IFC and the Mastercard Foundation published an ethnographic study on the perceptions and attitudes to digital financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study will increase financial inclusion by helping financial services providers better understand the user of African digital financial services (DFS). 

IFC is investing €15 million in a new private equity fund by AfricInvest, a leading private equity fund manager, to help expand access to finance for small and medium enterprises in North Africa. The investment is part of a larger effort to support economic growth and create jobs.

This report summarizes the discussions held in the context of the Roundtable on Digital Financial Inclusion in Africa during the 2017 EIB Africa Day, which was co-organized in Berlin on July 6, 2017 by the EIB, Afrika-Verein der Deutschen Wirtschaft and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It aims at providing an interim thematic update in between two editions of the EIB’s Study of Banking Sectors in sub-Saharan Africa.