Join Trade Treasury Payments Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, Deepesh Patel, catching up with EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso, discussing the bank's Sub-Saharan African expansion and the role of the Trade Facilitation Programme as a ‘day one’ response tool during crises.
Questions asked in this interview
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1:46What strategic role do you see for trade and trade finance as the bank expands into this region and how might that approach differ from your work across existing EBRD economies?
4:10And as global trade continues to come under scrutiny and pressure from conflict, sanctions, and supply chain shocks, do you see the TFP evolving into a broader instrument for long-term resilience and reconstruction?
6:00What role do you see the EBRD playing in shaping new trade corridors, particularly with regards to connecting Europe to Africa, Central Asia, and the Southern Mediterranean?
8:20What advice would you give to females entering the field of financial services, banking, trade, and development today?
My name is Depes Patel, editor in chief at Trade Treasury Payments. Today I'm delighted to be joined by the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Madame President, welcome to Trade Treasury Payments.
And it's just been a couple of weeks since the EBRD annual meeting held here in London. I'd like to start with talking to you about the ratification of article 1. Now the EBRD has the new mandate to operate in sub-Saharan Africa. What strategic role do you see for trade and trade finance as the bank expands into this region and how might that approach differ from your work across existing EBRD economies?
So first of all, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk about what we do in trade and trade finance at EBRD. Indeed, for us, this ratification of article 1 and the fact that we are going to start investing in some sub-Saharan African countries, we start with three: Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, and Nigeria, and we expect Senegal, Kenya, and Ghana also to come. Trade overall is a big challenge for sub-Saharan Africa. There is this big objective reflected in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which is to increase intra-African trade from 15% to 25% by 2040. Regional trade will be a key driver for growth in Africa in the years to come. But of course, everything we've been doing in other regions to support SMEs' export capacities, facilitate banking access to trade finance, and so forth, will be very relevant in sub-Saharan Africa. So we really expect trade finance to be one of the first components of what we are going to do in sub-Saharan Africa. I would not be surprised if one of the first projects we have would be in trade finance, because we have a lot of partnerships with banks that are working in other regions. For example, in Morocco, a lot of Moroccan banks are very active in sub-Saharan Africa. So probably this will be one of the first projects we will do in the region, and we hope it will really be one component of driving development of trade.
Thank you, and we really look forward to seeing the development as EBRD expands into the sub-Saharan African region. Now let's talk about the Trade Facilitation Program. It's often described as a day-one response tool in a moment of crisis. And as global trade continues to come under scrutiny and pressure from conflict, sanctions, and supply chain shocks, do you see the TFP evolving into a broader instrument for long-term resilience and reconstruction?
So indeed, as you mentioned, very often trade finance is the thing you can do in the most acute crisis, and sometimes it is difficult to finance long-term investment infrastructure projects or private sector FDI projects. But it's always possible, or almost always possible, to do trade finance. We see for example the situation in the West Bank; we have stepped up our level of trade finance with local banks in order to support SMEs exporting and importing. In Ukraine, since the beginning of the war, we have implemented 1.6 billion of trade finance. So it's a tool which is very useful and very relevant in crisis situations. It's also because of its short-term nature, and it addresses a need which is there, helping a country face acute challenges. But developing trade finance, as you flagged, is also a way to strengthen the resilience of a country and develop its capacity.
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Renaud-Basso, O. (2025, June 11). In conversation with Odile Renaud-Basso, EBRD President [Interview transcript]. Trade Treasury Payments. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1030571/
MLA
Odile Renaud-Basso. "In conversation with Odile Renaud-Basso, EBRD President." Trade Treasury Payments, 11 Jun. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1030571/.
BibTeX
@misc{renaudbasso2025_1030571,
author = {Odile Renaud-Basso},
title = {In conversation with Odile Renaud-Basso, EBRD President},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Trade Treasury Payments. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1030571/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
