Afreximbank (African Export-Import Bank)

Afreximbank, the African Export-Import Bank, is a multilateral African trade finance bank that lends, guarantees and runs a pan-African payment and settlement system. During the Zambian debt restructuring, opened after the November 2020 default, creditors spent months on one point: whether Afreximbank's loans would take the same haircut as everyone else's or escape it on the strength of preferred creditor status. The African Export-Import Bank was founded in 1993 under the auspices of the African Development Bank and is headquartered in Cairo. Its shareholders mix African states, central banks, public institutions and private investors. Its business is trade finance: credit lines to local banks, prefinancing of commodity exports, letter of credit confirmation, guarantees, and direct loans to sovereigns, which over the years have taken a large place on its balance sheet. That sovereign business is what fed the 2025 debate, when a rating agency downgraded the bank, citing its exposure to countries in restructuring. The bank also runs PAPSS, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System launched with the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area) Secretariat and commercially live since 2022. It settles a trade between two African countries in local currencies, without clearing in dollars in New York or in euros in Europe, which saves scarce hard currency and a few days. For a credit or political risk underwriter, the bank counts twice. First as a transaction partner: its participation or guarantee changes how an oil or cocoa prefinancing deal reads. Then as a creditor, because its ranking weighs on what is left for other lenders when a sovereign defaults. The preferred status it claims is, in its own reading, written into its founding agreement, but it binds only its members, and neither private creditors nor official committees have all accepted it.