Afreximbank Ventures Into Africa’s Technology Infrastructure Investment

Posted by African Examiner African News, Featured, Latest Headlines Wednesday, September 8th, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) said it has taken its investment portfolio further into Africa’s fast-growing technology infrastructure landscape in order to make far reaching development impact across the continent.

Afreximbank is a Pan-African multilateral financial institution mandated to finance and promote intra-and extra-African trade. The bank deploys innovative structures to deliver financing solutions that support the transformation of the structure of Africa’s trade, accelerating industrialization and intra-regional trade, thereby boosting economic expansion in Africa.

In a statement , the bank announced that its development impact-oriented subsidiary, the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA) has made its inaugural investment into Liquid Intelligent Technologies (Liquid), a pan-African telecommunications technology group.

FEDA provides equity and quasi-equity funding to companies developing trade and value-added export of goods and services in Africa.

This investment, according to the statement, enables FEDA to become a stakeholder in Africa’s fast-growing technology infrastructure landscape, in which Liquid is a leading player.

Notably, with fiber optic network currently stretching over 100,000 km across Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world’s fastest growing data market regions, Liquid has direct access to international submarine cable infrastructure as well as significant investment in data centres across the continent.

In addition, Liquid is the only operator in Sub-Saharan Africa with a multi-country fiber network of such geographic breadth. Its infrastructure therefore facilitates intra- and extra-African connectivity thereby reducing the cost of communication and trade, in line with the mandate of FEDA and Afreximbank.

President of Afreximbank, Prof. Benedict Oramah said FEDA’s investment in Liquid Intelligent Technologies is a landmark deal as the fund’s first investment, adding that the transaction is a demonstration of FEDA’s ability to leverage African Export-Import Bank’s network and invest in opportunities that will drive the structural transformation of trade on the continent.

“Liquid provides vital digital infrastructure that supports Africa’s connectivity and trade with the rest of the world. This investment will pave the way for more investments by FEDA and commences the process of building an institutional track record of successfully investing and delivering development impact on the continent”, he added.

Prof. Oramah noted that the mission of FEDA is to provide equity capital with a focus on delivering development impact in diverse sectors in Africa which are critical to driving intra-African trade and value-added export development, while providing a financial return to investors.