Afreximbank Trade Centres are new hubs to speed African integration

For businesspeople in Africa in need of hubs for business information and facilitation, there is finally an answer: the Afreximbank Africa Trade Centres (AATC).

Afreximbank plans to build nine such hubs across Africa and the Caribbean. Beyond providing business information and facilitating trade and investment, these centres will also serve as platforms for real-time digital engagements for people in different parts of the continent.

“The Abuja AATC is the first of several AATCs being developed across Africa and the Caribbean,” said Benedict Oramah, president of Afreximbank, while opening the event in Abuja. “With these, we expect to create a sizeable network of AATCs that will act as the lighthouses to guide the interconnections and flow of trade and investments within continental Africa and between Africa and Caribbean regions.”

Conceived by Afreximbank in 2018, it is intended to help Africans realise the full benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, that created the world’s largest free trade area.

As African countries seek to overcome colonial boundaries and historical separations, the trade centres represent, “strong physical institutional infrastructure for deepening connections and exchange of information among Africans and the Caribbean and indeed the wider African Diaspora,” according to Oramah.

The Abuja AATC has facilities for incubating technology startups as well as small and medium enterprises, conference and exhibition spaces and a business hotel, according to details provided by Afreximbank. It will also host the bank’s regional office.

In the first week of June, Afreximbank will open a 500-bed African Medical Centre of Excellence, one of its many social interventions, also located in Abuja. Developed with King’s College Hospital, London, at the cost of $750 million, it will provide specialist care usually sought outside Africa in cancer treatment, cardiac diseases and haematology.

Nigeria is also a beneficiary of African Quality Assurance Centres, facilities built by Afreximbank to make it easier to ascertain quality assurance for the export of agricultural commodities and value-added food destined for African and international markets. One of the centres is already functional in Ogun state in southwest Nigeria, while others are being developed in Imo state in the southeast and Kaduna state in the north.

Nigeria’s Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Okonjo-Iweala at the event noted Afreximbank’s many innovations and the advisory services it has provided to promote, not only trade among African countries but also trade between the continent and the rest of the world. “Afreximbank has been very compassionate in providing solutions to African trade problems,” Iweala said.

Nigeria is the biggest shareholder in the bank after Egypt and has received fund disbursements of more than $49 billion in support of state and private entities towards achieving its mandate of increased inter-African economic exchanges, according to Iweala.

Under Oramah, the leadership rose to the challenge of providing the solutions that would make the dream of a single trade area in Africa a reality through the AfCFTA. One of them was the introduction of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), which has made intra-African payments possible for businesses and individuals on the continent.

PAPSS observed Iweala, successfully integrated 41 payment systems across Africa to deliver seamless cross-border payments across 16 participating countries involving 144 commercial banks. PAPSS witnessed more than a ninefold growth in transaction volume in 2025.

The bank has many milestones mainly due to the “visionary leadership” provided by Oramah in charting a path to unite Africans, and also united them with their diaspora, according to Nigeria’s Trade and Investment Minister Olusegun Aganga.

“The launch of this Trade Centre is more than just a new building,” said Aganga. “It represents a clear step toward Africa taking greater control of its trade, both with the continent and globally.”