Online Reporter
Tapiwanashe Mangwiro
Business Reporter
THE African Export-Import Bank has extended a US$15 million facility to Ecobank Zimbabwe to provide support to small businesses in Zimbabwe’s export value chains.
The facility seeks to strengthen industrial activity and intra-African trade integration.
The funding falls under Afreximbank’s Export SME Development Programme (ESDP). It is meant for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in agribusiness, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, technology and the creative economy, among others.
The facility comes as Zimbabwe seeks to deepen export diversification and increase value addition amid improving macro-economic conditions and renewed focus on regional trade opportunities under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Afreximbank said the financing would provide working capital and capital expenditure support to SMEs, which contribute more than 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product and over 70 percent of employment but remain constrained by limited access to long-term finance.
“The latest transaction builds on a relationship with Ecobank Zimbabwe dating back to 2018 and reflects a shared commitment to expanding SME access to finance, deepening export value chains and driving inclusive economic growth in Zimbabwe”.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Afreximbank managing director for export development, Ms Oluranti Doherty, said the facility was designed to tackle financing gaps that conventional lenders often avoided.
“In Zimbabwe and across the continent, Afreximbank remains firmly committed to supporting SMEs as engines of export expansion, economic resilience and long-term development,” she said.
“This facility with Ecobank Zimbabwe Limited exemplifies the kind of high-additionality, high-impact intervention that the ESDP was designed to deliver, addressing market failures that commercial finance alone cannot resolve, and building the productive capacity of enterprises that are central to Africa’s trade transformation.”
She said the programme sought to go beyond traditional lending.
