• Vista Group secures €30 million ($34.9 million) in loans from the EIB.
• Funds will expand credit access for SMEs in agriculture value chains.
• Guinea and Sierra Leone aim to reduce food import dependence.

Pan-African banking group Vista, based in Guinea, has obtained two loans totaling €30 million ($34.9 million) from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to improve credit access for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-sized firms in the agricultural sector in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The financing agreements were signed in Washington on the sidelines of the World Bank and IMF annual meetings held from October 13 to 18, 2025.

According to a statement on the EIB’s website, the loans include $23.2 million for Vista Gui, the group’s Guinean subsidiary, and $11.6 million for Vista Bank (SL) in Sierra Leone.

About 70% of the funds will be allocated to developing local agricultural value chains, including cashew, rice, fruits and vegetables, and fish in Guinea, as well as cocoa, palm oil, cassava, and coffee in Sierra Leone.

“In addition, a complementary technical assistance program will be launched to help banks efficiently deploy the funds. It will strengthen their lending capacity to the agricultural sector, support the development of financial products, and align their environmental and social management systems with EIB standards,” the statement said.

As in most sub-Saharan African countries, Guinea and Sierra Leone are net importers of agricultural and agri-food products. Expanding access to financing in the agri-food industry is seen as a key step to improving local production capacity and gradually reducing reliance on imports.

In its July 2025 report “The State of Commodity Dependence 2025,” the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted that Guinea imported an average of $889.5 million in food products between 2021 and 2023, while Sierra Leone spent an average of $472.3 million over the same period.