The accession follows the historic approval by the South African Parliament in 2025, cementing a strategic partnership between Africa’s leading multilateral Bank and the continent’s industrial powerhouse.
The Republic of South Africa has officially acceded to the Establishment Agreement of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Africa’s leading multilateral financial institution, marking the formal entry of one of the continent’s largest economies into the Bank’s membership and heralding deeper financial sovereignty.
The accession follows the historic approval by the South African Parliament in 2025, cementing a strategic partnership between Africa’s leading multilateral Bank and the continent’s industrial powerhouse. South Africa becomes the 54th state to accede to the Bank’s Establishment Agreement, a historic milestone as the two partners aim to unlock trade opportunities within a global financial system increasingly influenced by protectionist policies and shifting trade blocs.
To operationalise this partnership, Afreximbank will launch major financial interventions in South Africa, including a new US$8 billion Country Programme designed to strengthen the national economy. These programmes are tailored to expand the Bank’s developmental impact, enhance industrial development and regional supply chains, and significantly boost intra-African trade and investment flows. The initiatives are strategically aligned with South Africa’s economic ambitions.
As the continent’s highest regional contributor to intra-African trade, accounting for 19.1% of Africa’s total trade in 2024, South Africa is uniquely positioned to leverage Afreximbank’s trade infrastructure, expertise, and pan-African reach to extend its export relationships across the continent.
“For more than 30 years, Afreximbank has demonstrated its own ability, its resilience, its innovative capability but it has more than that demonstrated that it has impact. This affirmation of the membership of South Africa in Afreximbank marks a decisive step towards uniting around the continent’s economic interests, the interests of our mother continent. South Africa’s membership of the Bank, while providing Afreximbank a full continental coverage, brings the country into the heart of Afreximbank’s vision and its aspirations to promote the change so much desired in the structure of Africa’s trade. I am therefore pleased that together with the South African Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), under the leadership of Hon. Minister Parks Tau, we have put together what we consider an important package of US$8 billion for South Africa. The country programme is aligned with South Africa’s national development plan 2030 and national industrial and trade priorities, and targets key strategic areas.”
– Dr George Elombi, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Afreximbank
Dr Elombi added that Afreximbank’s current pipeline of projects in South Africa, at different stages of review, exceeds US$6 billion, spanning healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, energy, industrial, and mining sectors.
“Today we mark a major milestone in our quest to realise what I would call the economic integration of our continent. South Africa’s accession to the African Export-Import Bank affirms our commitment to African industrial development and to deepening trade, investment and development across our continent. Once finalised, the South African-Afreximbank Country programme will be operationalised with a finance package that will initially support a range of strategic projects across the trade and industrial cluster. And one of those areas that we are going to focus on with immediate effect is to give muscle to our Transformation Fund, to support black businesses who, by the way, were held back by the apartheid system from being active participants in the economy of our country. For more than 30 years, Afreximbank has demonstrated its own ability, its resilience, its innovative capability but it has more than that demonstrated that it has impact. This partnership will strengthen in more ways than one South Africa’s ability to support South African exporters, industrial projects and regional value chains while advancing our continent’s progress.”
– H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, President, Republic of South Africa
Following the announcement, South Africa and Afreximbank resolved to jointly pursue trade and economic development programmes. Key initiatives include the South Africa-Africa Trade and Investment Promotion Programme (SATIPP), the Afreximbank Guarantee Programme, financing for Industrial Parks and Special Economic Zones, export trading company financing, Project and Asset Based Finance, conventional trade finance, Afreximbank Project Preparation, and targeted financing for the creative and cultural industries, alongside a broad range of advisory services.
