The African Development Bank (AfDB) and Paris Europlace signed a cooperation agreement on 08
July in Paris, for the launch of several structuring initiatives with three objectives. First of all
support the development of capital markets, serving the financing of economies and
businesses in Africa; then support the development of digital finance in Africa, a driver of
development of African finance for the years to come; and finally supporting the development of
skills and talents, through training.
Stefan Nalletamby, Director of the AfDB's Financial Sector Development Department ,
representing the Bank, said: "Our ambition is to help African countries to have markets
efficient to enable them to mobilize their internal resources with a view to financing the
development. This agreement with Paris Europlace will contribute to building the capacities of stakeholders and
resource mobilization for African financial markets”.
The two partners have maintained regular exchanges for several years within the framework of
AfricaFinLab, an African finance laboratory launched by Paris Europlace in 2017, and bringing together
players in African and French or even European finance, but also in the Financial Markets Initiative
(AFMI), launched by the AfDB in 2008.
The objective of this agreement is to go a step further by creating a framework conducive to accelerating
and strengthen exchanges between Paris Europlace and the African Development Bank in several
areas. This will involve, for example, strengthening the sharing and dissemination of statistical data and
publications, to hold capacity building seminars and workshops and to mobilize
investors, notably within the framework of the African Investment Forum (AIF).
Indeed, the Bank's dialogue missions and interventions with countries in the deepening
financial systems, focus on the development of capital markets and the support
to commercial banks. These interventions also concern digital finance, the financing of
trade, SME financing, strengthening financial inclusion and venture capital, not to mention
financial sector reform support policies .
In recent years, there has been an increased interest from international investors in wanting to take advantage of
high local currency returns in the real sector of African countries, thus broadening the
resource mobilization opportunities for the continent.
In this context, the Bank collaborates with market regulators, stock exchanges , financial centers
international organizations as well as other capital market stakeholders. The Bank's objective is to
strengthen regulatory frameworks, expand market players and product offerings, but also
improve the dissemination of capital market data.