Afreximbank Commits To Financing Africa’s Mineral Processing Projects

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has announced its commitment to the financing of Africa’s mineral processing projects.

This is with a bid to helping the market value of such products.

The bank’s new president, George Elombi, made the pledge at his swearing in yesterday.

He said his dispensation would usher in a new era of domestic value addition, committed to ending the export of raw commodities and minerals from the continent.

This would translate to the the development of mineral processing projects rather than export of raw materials.

“No more Nigerian bauxite, or Gabonese manganese, or Cameroonian bauxite, or South African bauxite, raw. We are not interested,” Elombi said.

“We will focus on domestic processing. This has numerous benefits.”

“Afreximbank will therefore create a new high-impact financing window, specifically for projects that process raw minerals into semi-finished goods or finished goods,” the president said.

He said his dispensation also plans to establish a strategic minerals development programme that would process and finance entire value chains, from extraction and refining to manufacturing finished components.

READ ALSO: How You Can Go into Export Business & Make Millions

READ ALSO: Non Oil Exports: See List OF Products Driving Nigeria’s Foreign Exchange Earnings

Bemoaning africa’s poor infrastructure level,  he said Afrieximbank already has plans for the turning  excess power to construct transmission lines and take it to those with less.

“We will accelerate investments in critical trade-enabling infrastructure projects that directly connect African markets to one another,” he said.

Modernising seaports, constructing highways and rail lines, and building specialised logistics hubs, warehousing facilities, and pipelines, are some of the things that attract the bank’s attention, he stated.