• The International Finance Corporation is providing a $30 million trade finance guarantee to Banco de Fomento Angola.
• The facility will support import-export transactions by covering payment risk for international banks.
• The move comes as Angola seeks to ease structural constraints in trade finance and restore international banking links.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group, has granted a $30 million trade finance facility to Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA). The operation takes the form of an unfunded guarantee covering trade transactions with maturities of up to 360 days and is structured under the IFC’s Global Trade Finance Program (GTFP).

Under the arrangement, the IFC does not disburse funds immediately. Instead, it commits to cover BFA’s risk of non-payment toward major international confirming banks that guarantee the completion of import-export transactions for foreign suppliers.

The mechanism allows BFA to back its letters of credit with the IFC’s top-tier financial rating, giving the Angolan bank access to international trade finance lines it would otherwise struggle to secure on its own.

BFA is the country’s second-largest bank by deposits and loans. As of June 2025, it operated 160 branches and served more than 3.4 million clients. The bank is majority owned by telecom operator Unitel (36.90%) and Portugal’s BPI (33.35%), a subsidiary of CaixaBank.

In September 2025, BFA completed a stock market listing, selling 29.75% of its capital to more than 8,000 individual investors. The transaction was a rare development in Angola’s still-limited capital market.

Trade Finance Still Under Pressure in Africa

Trade finance remains severely constrained across Africa. Multilateral institutions estimate the continent’s trade finance gap at more than $100 billion, driven by limited dollar liquidity, tighter regulatory compliance requirements, and difficulties in assessing credit risk.

In Angola, these challenges are compounded by the lack of direct correspondent banking relationships with U.S. banks, a situation that has persisted since November 2016 following Deutsche Bank’s exit. Local banks have since had to route international payments through European intermediaries, increasing transaction costs.

The country was also placed on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) gray list in October 2024 due to shortcomings in its anti-money laundering framework, further complicating access to international credit lines.

Some positive developments have emerged, however. At the end of 2025, JPMorgan resumed U.S. dollar clearing services for Angola, restoring the processing and settlement of dollar-denominated transactions that had been interrupted since Deutsche Bank’s withdrawal in 2016. Observers see the move as a sign of renewed confidence among international financial institutions in the reforms pursued by Luanda.

Fiacre E. Kakpo