By George Ozalla
The African Export-Import Bank has unveiled the first batch of startups selected for its accelerator programme, an initiative aimed at strengthening Africa’s digital trade space and backing homegrown innovation.
The programme is built to support entrepreneurs developing practical solutions that can ease trade across borders, with focus areas including payments, digital marketplaces and trade finance tools.
From a wide pool of applicants, a select group of startups made the first cohort, bringing together businesses working on logistics, agricultural export platforms, artificial intelligence and supply chain financing. These are areas widely seen as critical to fixing the everyday bottlenecks that slow trade across the continent.
The bank said the programme is not limited to financial support. Participants will also receive access to networks, partnerships and guidance needed to grow beyond their home markets and operate across different African economies.
The move reflects a steady shift by Afreximbank toward using digital systems to tackle long-standing trade challenges, especially those that make cross-border transactions slow and costly. Established to support trade within and outside Africa, the bank has in recent years placed increasing weight on practical solutions that can make regional commerce work more smoothly under the continent’s free trade framework.
