… As assets rise to $40bn in 10 years
Benedict Oramah, the outgoing President of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), has transformed the institution into what has been described as “Africa’s development supermarket,” according to George Elombi, the incoming President of the bank.
Elombi remarked on Friday during the Afreximbank Legacy Conference and Investiture held in Cairo, Egypt, in honour of Professor Oramah. He said Oramah’s leadership redefined the role of Afreximbank and repositioned it as a powerhouse of development ideas and practical solutions for the continent’s economic transformation.
“Okey has helped turn the Bank into Africa’s development supermarket, an institution with a suite of solutions for our challenges to development,” Elombi said, describing Oramah’s decade-long presidency as a turning point in the bank’s history.
From a relatively modest financial institution with only $6 billion in assets in 2015, Afreximbank has grown into a continental giant with assets exceeding 40 billion dollars. The bank’s rapid expansion, Elombi noted, has been accompanied by the creation of several strategically important subsidiaries and initiatives, including the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), AfrexInsure, a project preparation fund, a concessionary finance window, and the African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE), among others. These initiatives have broadened the bank’s impact beyond trade finance into critical areas of industrialisation, healthcare, and sustainable development.
Elombi recalled that when Oramah assumed office in 2015, his vision for Afreximbank was already clear. Building on the solid foundations laid by his predecessors, he sought to accelerate Africa’s trade and socio-economic transformation by expanding the bank’s scale and depth of intervention. “He implemented ideas that many of us once considered overambitious,” Elombi said, explaining that Oramah adopted what became known as a “portfolio approach”, a comprehensive model that did not focus on trade alone but also on the infrastructure, systems, and institutional support that make trade possible.
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Under his leadership, Afreximbank and its partners built a solid foundation for advancing intra-African trade and industrial development. New instruments were designed to dismantle obstacles that have hindered Africa’s progress for nearly seven decades since independence. Oramah, Elombi said, confronted Africa’s industrial challenges head-on, building upon the groundwork of those who came before him while charting bold new directions for the future.
Today, Afreximbank stands among the leading multilateral financial institutions driving Africa’s development efforts, particularly in implementing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and transforming the continent’s industrial landscape.
Oramah, through visionary leadership, has turned what were once mere political aspirations into concrete economic gains. Africans in the diaspora can now confidently reconnect with their ancestral homeland and participate in growing opportunities across the continent, while those within Africa are increasingly engaging their brothers and sisters across the Atlantic in renewed economic and cultural exchange.
Elombi described Oramah as a man of many dimensions, tireless, brilliant, and deeply committed to Africa’s cause. “A few days ago, I told him that each day we discover a new facet of Oramah. You assume you have fully understood him but, like the sphinx, he renews himself into something else. He is therefore a man of numerous facets,” he said.
He added that Oramah’s colleagues often describe him as generous, energetic, and indefatigable, a man who attends his fifteenth meeting of the day at midnight with the same enthusiasm he shows at his first meeting in the morning. “He is the president who reads every document and leaves insightful mark-ups everywhere; a man who embodies grace, humility, and compassion; a devoted family man; a provider of Covid-19 vaccines; and the one who turned the dream of reconnecting Africans in the Diaspora with their homeland into reality,” Elombi said.
He recounted how Oramah often stayed up late into the night with a glass of red wine, drafting statements or fine-tuning financing proposals, noting that no single description could ever fully capture his essence. “Every time you think 50 speakers have exhausted all that can be said about Oramah, another 50 will emerge to say 50 new glorious things about him,” he added.
As part of the ceremony, Afreximbank presented a coffee table book chronicling the bank’s transformation over the past decade under Oramah’s leadership. Elombi said the publication serves both as a tribute to Oramah’s legacy and a reminder of what the bank can achieve in the next decade.
“This book symbolises the unforgettable memory of the transformation you brought to the Bank and a gentle reminder to us all of what we can achieve over the next decade,” he said.
