In conversation with Odile Renaud-Basso

Overall, trade is a big challenge for sub-Saharan Africa. I think there is this big objective reflected in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which is to increase trade across Africa from 15% to 25% in 2040. Regional trade is expected to be a key driver for growth in Africa in the years to come.

Thank you very much for welcoming me here.

So first of all, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk about what we do in trade and trade finance in EBRD. And indeed for us this ratification of article one and the fact that we are going to start investing in some sub-Saharan African countries, and so we start with three: it will be Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, and Nigeria, and we expect Senegal, Kenya, and Ghana also to come. And trade overall is a big challenge for sub-Saharan Africa. I think there is this big objective reflected in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement which is to increase trade across Africa from 15% to 25% in 2040. Regional trade is expected to 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 first component of what we are going to do in sub-Saharan Africa. I would not be surprised if one of the first projects we would have would be in trade finance because we also have a lot of partnerships with banks which are working in other regions. We've built partnerships in other regions, for example Morocco, and 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 help be one component of driving development of trade. Thank you.

So indeed I think as you mentioned, very often trade finance is the thing you can do in the most acute crisis, and sometimes it's difficult to finance long-term investment infrastructure projects, private sector FDI projects may be difficult, but it's always possible or almost always possible to do some trade finance. And we see for example the situation in West Bank, we have stepped up our level of trade finance with local banks in order to support SMEs exporting, importing and so forth. In Ukraine since the beginning of the war, we have implemented 1.6 billion of trade finance. So it's very much a tool which is very useful and very relevant in crisis situations. It's also because of its short term and it addresses a need which is there, which is really helping a country to face acute challenges. But developing trade finance as you flag is also a way to strengthen the resilience of the country and develop its capacity.

We see this as a priority. I think that indeed with the shock on global trade, development of regional trade, development of new corridors will be very important. We've been focusing a lot for example on the corridor between Central Asia and Europe which is needed. I mean you need to develop new infrastructure and we've done a study in order to assess what was needed to develop this corridor which is very much due to the war on Ukraine and the impact on the war in Ukraine and the need to develop new avenues for trade. So we are contributing as a bank; we invest in projects, infrastructure projects to facilitate this kind of connectivity. So be it in railway, in port infrastructure, in digital infrastructure, but also in custom digitalization, custom simplification and so forth. We use both our financial instruments but also our policy work to develop the connectivity between Central Asia and Europe, but also of course Southern Mediterranean with South of Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa will be also very important to connect. They have quite a lot of ports and activity between Europe and port. So I think that's a priority for us because we see for emerging markets to be able to grow and so forth, developing this regional trade will be very important.

Trust yourself. I think that you can have a very interesting enriching career in this area. Women in finance can do a lot. I think that and then they can work in big organizations and find their way up. It's very much a question of confidence, trust, and ensuring that you like what you do and you enjoy working on the issues you have to deal with. Trust yourself and enjoy what you do.