Nairobi, Kenya: 08 June 2026 — The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) announced that its Board of Directors has approved a USD125 million equity investment in the African Trade & Investment Development Insurance (ATIDI), significantly strengthening the organization’s capital base and enhancing its capacity to unlock trade, investment and sustainable economic growth across Africa through expanded risk mitigation support. This additional investment will build on AfDB’s existing equity of USD15 million in ATIDI.
This strategic investment by AfDB represents a strong vote of confidence in ATIDI’s countercyclical role as Africa’s leading provider of risk mitigation solutions and underscores the critical importance of de-risking instruments for unlocking private capital for development across ATIDI member states. By strengthening ATIDI’s capital structure and underwriting capacity, the investment is expected to catalyze billions of dollars in trade and investment, reduce financing costs and channel greater private sector funding in Africa’s growing economies.
As Africa accelerates the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), enhanced access to political risk and credit insurance solutions will be critical for deepening regional integration, promoting SME development, strengthening value chains and significantly boosting cross-border trade and investment flows across regions.
Since becoming a shareholder in ATIDI in 2013, AfDB has played a central role in strengthening the organization, providing USD100 million in support for African governments’ membership in ATIDI and partnering on landmark transactions that have demonstrated the scale and effectiveness of ATIDI’s risk mitigation solutions across the continent. Some of these include backing a USD159 million loan to Ethiopian Airlines for the acquisition of an Airbus A350-900 aircraft in 2017 and collaboration on a USD500 million credit insurance facility covering part of AfDB’s non-sovereign financial sector portfolio in 2018. In 2023, ATIDI also became a strategic partner of the AfDB-led Lusophone Development Compact, committing to deploy its risk mitigation solutions to accelerate private sector investment and economic transformation across Portuguese-speaking African countries.
ATIDI and AfDB, through partial risk-backed guarantee structures, have jointly supported transactions across Angola, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire, de-risking approximately USD1.68 billion in financing, thereby strengthening sovereign access to finance and enabling the mobilization of large-scale development capital into priority sectors in Africa. ATIDI has also collaborated with AfDB in enabling the financing of strategic power infrastructure including projects such as the Lake Turkana Wind Farm and Globeleq Menengai Geothermal project, both in Kenya.
Since inception, ATIDI has supported more than USD93 billion worth of trade and investment across Africa, underscoring its enabling role of risk mitigation in mobilising large scale capital flows, de-risking cross-border transactions and driving sustainable economic development across the continent.
For ATIDI’s CEO, Manuel Moses, “AfDB’s equity investment is yet another milestone in the exemplary partnership between ATIDI and the African Development Bank Group. Our institutions have successfully collaborated to enable flagship developmental projects across the continent. We are happy to further strengthen our bond with AfDB to support the strengthening of Africa ’s financial ecosystem and to catalyse trade and investment at the scale where it sustainably drives the continent’s economic emergence. The best is still to come.”
Through this equity investment, AfDB becomes ATIDI’s largest shareholder, further strengthening ATIDI’s balance sheet and underwriting capacity to support the Bank’s Four Cardinal Points and Africa’s economic transformation through scalable risk mitigation solutions.
“The investment is in line with the Bank’s Ten-Year Strategy (2024–2033), as it encourages private-sector solutions and increases financing for Africa,” said Solomon Quaynor, African Development Bank Group Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure, and Industrialisation. “It is also fully in line with the Bank’s policy on non-sovereign operations, which aims to support the financing of private-sector investments and projects in regional member countries – and also in line with the African Continental Free Trade Area in its aim to increase regional trade across the continent.”
By strengthening one of Africa’s highest-rated and most trusted risk mitigation organisation, this investment will significantly enhance ATIDI’s capacity to crowd in additional domestic and international capital, support investment in strategic sectors including energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture and financial services and drive inclusive, long-term sustainable economic growth and resilience across the continent.
