The city of Casablanca, Morocco, is set to host African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank’s) annual meeting on ‘structured trade finance’ next November.
The 2018 seminar and workshop will take place from 7 to 9 November, according to the Cairo-based Afreximbank press statement.
It will be the 18th in the series, which aims to equip African financial institutions, bankers and professionals from regulatory agencies, corporates and legal firms with skills for dealing with the challenges of financing transactions under heightened global economic uncertainty.
The meeting will be organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Morocco.
In a message in Cairo, Afreximbank said that the 2018 seminar will focus on the Fundamentals of Structured Trade Finance, with the expectation that, at the end of the seminar, participants would have acquired the skills and capacity to properly identify risks in typical trade finance transactions and would be able to structure bankable trade and trade-related project finance deals of varying levels of complexity.
According to the Bank, even though it is now commonly accepted that structured finance is an effective tool for financing trade in the context of uncertainty and economic difficulty, expertise in the field has remained in short supply in Africa, hence the development of two flagship courses, ‘Fundamentals of Structured Trade Finance’ and ‘Advanced Structured Trade Finance’, which the Bank offers in alternate years during the seminars. Prof. Benedict Oramah, President of Afreximbank, said that the event had also become an important platform for African bankers and other trade finance practitioners to meet and network, thereby making a major contribution in boosting African trade.
This year’s speakers will include highly rated experts from leading financial institutions and firms as well as key financial services regulators from Africa and beyond.
The more than 200 expected participants will be senior executives from African banks and financial institutions, regulatory institutions, hedge funds, Africa country funds, venture capital institutions, corporate entities engaged in trade, manufacturing and privatized infrastructure projects, Afreximbank’s trade finance and project finance intermediaries, African law firms and insurance firms.
About 1,600 African trade finance professionals have taken part in the seminars and workshops since they were introduced in 1999. The 2017 seminar and workshop took place in Cape Verde.