Afreximbank Goes To China As It Seeks To Diversify Funding

At this year's World Economic Forum so much focus was trained on the new administration in Washington DC and the uncertainty that it presages for the global order that Africa and issues important to the continent felt largely sidelined. But Denys Denya, executive vice president with oversight over finance, administration and banking services at the African Export-Import Bank Afreximbank, believes that it was important to be there nonetheless.

"We are a partnership organisation so we are looking for partners who can enable us to achieve our objectives. We are talking to participants from all over the world," he told African Business in Davos.

Denya says the bank's delegation has had some success. "We had a meeting with the Swiss authorities to see how they can help us, especially in the health sector, as we are building world-class hospitals on the continent. We want to help Africa produce more medicines and vaccines locally and Switzerland is very good at that," he explains.

Davos is also an important place to take the global temperature and have frank conversations with the movers and shakers. "We are here to make connections," he adds.

Those connections will become even more useful for Afreximbank as it seeks to diversify its sources of funding, something the bank is focused on as it seeks to build out its war chest to prosecute its ambitious agenda for Africa. Days before we met, the bank's plans for diversifying its funding sources received a significant boost when the China Chengxin International Credit Rating Company assigned it an "AAA/Stable" rating - the first African multilateral financial institution to be so rated - on the back of its strategic positioning risk management framework business generation profitability and liquidity management.