Africa: Afreximbank Raises $3m Grant For Covid-19 Response

 

$3Million has been raised for African countries by Afreximbank in a way to fight Covid-19 Pandemic.

 

The African Export-Import Bank, AFREXIMBANK announced a grant of $3million in order to complement African efforts to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

The of the bank, Prof. Benedict Oramah revealed this in Cairo, Egypt. He disclosed that the grant was in response to a request by African heads of state, through the auspices of the African Union Chair Person, the South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, for the mobilisation of resources to address the general pandemic.

He said that a significant proportion of the grant would go to the Covid-19 Special Fund set up by the African Union (AU) as well as to the African Center for Disease Control (Africa CDC).

He said,

“We hope that our modest contribution will help to address some of the immediate needs.

We encourage other African banks, funds, corporations and charitable organisations to also contribute to the relief effort.”

Highlighting the need for wide institutional support for the Covid-19 response effort, he said that “no one country or institution will be able to rise to the challenge of the pandemic on its own.”

 

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Afreximbank’s grant support comes in addition to several initiatives the Bank is taking to support the effort in fighting the pandemic, such as the $3-billion Pandemic Trade Impact Mitigation Facility. This was launched in March to help African countries deal with the economic and health impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Also, Afreximbank has set aside an amount of $200Million for the use in financing the production of Covid-19 equipment and supplies within Africa.

However, Oramah said that the resource constraints and urgent nature of interventions on the ground required significant grant financing to ensure timely support for emergency interventions in combating the pandemic.

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