GHIB’s financing blueprint aims to unlock billions in lost export revenue – CEO
Mr Dean Adansi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ghana International Bank (GHIB), has set out a financing blueprint to shift Africa’s commodity trade from raw exports to value-added products.
He argued that the current export model was leaving billions of dollars in potential earnings on the table.
Speaking to the BBC on the sidelines of the GHIB CONVERGE 2025 conference in London, he said Africa’s share of global trade remained under three percent, in part because of a persistent trade finance gap that leaves exporters unable to invest in local processing.
“Interest rates are significantly higher than in the West in many African countries, making it very difficult for smaller entities with short-track records to obtain the financing they need to export commodities, or even to industrialise locally,” he noted.
Mr Adansi said the causes were structural; shallow capital markets, expensive working capital, and limited regulatory and infrastructure support.
He stressed that for every US$1 of trade, there was a US$1.70 impact on GDP, meaning that closing an US$80 billion trade finance gap in sub-Saharan Africa could generate an additional US$133 billion annually.
“The consequences are significant; in jobs, in revenues, and in building the local savings needed to strengthen domestic capital markets,” he said.
Mr Adansi added that GHIB, operating from London for the past 65 years, was working with local financial institutions in West Africa to build capacity and make them more attractive to larger international lenders.
This, he argued, created a sustainable cycle in which local banks could then support SMEs and smaller exporters.
GHIB’s data and operational record back the bank’s proposed role in tackling the value-addition gap.
Over the past five years, the Ghana-owned bank has facilitated more than US$14 billion in total trade flows, including US$10.6 billion in documentary trade collections and US$2.7 billion in primary trade finance transactions across Sub-Saharan Africa. Downstream payments to West Africa in 2024 alone exceeded US$8.5 billion.
Mr Adansi stressed that financing remained the main bottleneck to processing. Adding that “processing plants need substantial upfront capital, longer repayment periods, and different risk assessments than standard commodity trade deals.”
“Traditional banking products are rarely designed to support multi-year investment cycles in processing,” he said.
The GHIB CONVERGE 2025 conference, organised by GHIB, heard examples of missed opportunities.
In one case, a contract worth more than US$10 million for onions destined for Senegal was fulfilled by European suppliers, despite West African countries having sufficient raw output.
This is because African producers could not secure financing for processing capacity. GHIB’s plan calls for specialized commodity finance instruments such as pre-export financing tied to off-take agreements, inventory financing against stored commodities, and equipment leasing to reduce capital outlays.
According to research presented at the conference, raising Africa’s share of value-added exports from 14 to 25 per cent could generate over US$50 billion in extra annual revenue and millions of industrial jobs.
Ghana’s own recent gains in cocoa processing with local capacity rising from negligible levels to roughly 15 per cent of output and investments in gold refining were cited as examples of what targeted finance can achieve.
However, Mr Adansi warned that processing could not advance without parallel infrastructure improvements: steady electricity supply, modern transport networks, and skilled technical labour.
BY TIMES REPORTER
