The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) is developing a roadmap to strengthen the Arab-African trade in the next three years, said media reports.
The roadmap includes identifying business opportunities and the areas of finance, building logistics platform, supporting trade, credit and insurance, and developing the necessary infrastructure to facilitate trade.
IDB’s support for development programmes and infrastructure projects in Africa has reached more than US$43 billion, which included funding for projects in infrastructure, said IDB Group President, Dr Bandar Hajjar, at the Arab-African Trade Bridges (AATB) forum, held in Rabat, Morocco in February.
The volume of trade financing granted to Arab and African member countries since the establishment of the IDB’s trade financing arm – International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) – has reached about $15 billion.
He added that this is in addition to cooperation with many strategic partners to design and implement programmes for the development of trade among member countries.
Dr Hajjar also urged Arab and Sub-Saharan African countries to take advantage of upcoming capacity development schemes made possible by the “Arab-African Trade Bridges” programme over the next three years.
Participants at the forum and side events included trade ministers, directors of trade promotion agencies, presidents of the chambers of commerce and industry representing OIC Arab and Sub-Saharan African member countries as well as international financial institutions and banks.
The initiative of the “Trade Bridges between Arab and Sub-Saharan African countries” forum was proposed by the ITFC during the meeting of the Coordination Group to support cooperation in the field of foreign trade and export credit.
Besides ITFC, the Coordination Group includes the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit (ICIEC), the Arab Trade Financing Program, the Arab Monetary Fund, the OPEC Fund for International Development, the Saudi Fund for Development and the Arab Investment & Export Credit Guarantee Corporation.