The leading pan-African banking Group, the Ecobank Group, is delighted to be supporting the Intra-African Trade Fair 2021 taking place from November 15-21, 2021, in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This very important Trade Fair promises to help accelerate Africa’s commercial and economic growth and development, a core mission of the Ecobank Group.

Akin Dada, Group Executive, Corporate and Investment Banking, Ecobank Group said: “The Intra-African Trade Fair provides Africa’s businesses with unique opportunities for unrivalled networking to establish new business contacts from every country across the African continent. This is coming at a time that the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement is breaking down the historic barriers to intra-African trade and investments by creating a huge single market. At the Ecobank Group we recognise that this will feed through to exponential growth in the demand and need for the convenience of a reliable and secure payments ecosystem and we already have the established scale to facilitate this as the payments bank of choice across Africa.”

IATF2021 will play a vital role in raising awareness and helping Africa’s businesses to leverage on the benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), grow and expand their international reach. In conjunction with improvements in market information about the goods and services that are available in other African countries, it will increase intra-African trade and negate the longstanding but unnecessary importation of such products from outside the African continent, while boosting sourcing from within Africa.

As a key supporter determined to play a significant role in helping to achieve the objectives of the AfCFTA, the Ecobank Group is delighted to be sponsoring the IATF2021 which promises to be an important vehicle in making the vision of ‘one African market’ a reality.

The Ecobank Group already has in place numerous solutions to facilitate the exponential growth in intra-African trade growth being created by the AfCFTA. These include its scalable digital payments ecosystem which can facilitate trade and ecommerce payments across Africa; its nurturing and supporting of micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) through its provision of financial and non-financial support to help them grow and succeed; smart cash management functionalities; its Ecobank Marketplace providing a ready-made and accessible ecommerce solution for sole traders and MSMEs to grow their customer base and sales; its range of training programmes to upskill businesses’ management abilities; and the provision of innovative funding solutions. The Ecobank Group’s intent is to be the ‘go to’ bank for payments and trade finance in Africa.

In addition, the Ecobank Group has a series of webinars specially designed for African entrepreneurs to help them grasp and maximise their opportunities being created by the AfCFTA.

As the Best 2021 SME Bank of the Year, the Ecobank Group is continuously focusing on new solutions to meet its diverse customers’ needs. A recent example is its multi-award winning Ellevate programme. Ellevate by Ecobank provides women led/owned or focused businesses and entrepreneurs with a full suite of products, services and tools – financial, educational, growth and advisory – to empower them and help their businesses thrive.