Africa Re (African Reinsurance Corporation)

Africa Re is a pan-African reinsurer, whose new Abuja headquarters, replacing the Lagos head office, was inaugurated on June 24, 2026, to which some states require their insurers to make a legal cession on their treaties. In 1976, member states of the Organization of African Unity and the African Development Bank (AfDB) signed in Yaoundé the agreement creating the African Reinsurance Corporation, later headquartered in Lagos. The starting point was simple: most of the continent's reinsurance premiums went to London, Paris or Zurich, along with the hard currency, and the technical know-how stayed on the other side of the Mediterranean. Africa Re was meant to keep a share of it on the continent. The legal tool is the legal cession. The founding agreement provides that insurers in member states cede to Africa Re a quota share of their reinsurance treaties, historically 5%, whatever reinsurer is chosen for the rest. How it is applied varies a great deal: some states enforce it by law, others have let it lapse, and in the zone of the Inter-African Conference on Insurance Markets (CIMA), it comes on top of the cession owed to CICA-RE (Joint Reinsurance Company of the CIMA Member States). The capital, first held by the states and the AfDB, was opened to African insurance companies and then, in 2015, to international insurance and reinsurance groups. Africa Re now writes well beyond its compulsory cessions, with regional offices in several countries, and often leads treaties in African markets. For a cedant, the legal cession reads as a mandatory line: it comes off the placement before the broker shows the rest to the market, on the treaty terms. For a foreign underwriter reinsuring a local fronting arrangement, it means a slice of the risk goes to Africa Re, so the wording has to be checked, along with whether that share is taken before or after its own. Brokers' caveat is enforcement: a legal obligation the local regulator does not monitor quickly turns into a commercial habit, and practice differs from one country to the next.