IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), parent company of the Ecobank Group, have jointly launched a $110m risk-sharing facility that will increase access to finance for small and medium sized enterprises in fragile and conflict-affected states in West and Central Africa.

Saran Kebet-Koulibaly, IFC Director for West and Central Africa, said: “IFC places a strategic priority on promoting a sustainable architecture to improve access to finance and spur job creation in fragile- and conflict-affected states.”

"Our partnership will enable Ecobank to better support small and medium enterprises which face difficulty accessing much-needed credit in these economies.”

The target countries face extreme and persistent poverty exceeding 50% of their populations, coupled with severe socio-economic challenges, such as low employment, lack of infrastructure, and high insecurity that disrupts business activity and impedes access to finance.

These difficult environments have exacerbated the challenges faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which represent the backbone of the participating countries’ economies and provide the bulk of employment.

The facility is designed to overcome the challenges of lending to these smaller businesses, which have a higher risk profile, in what are some of the world’s poorest countries.

With IFC and Ecobank sharing risk equally in the $110m facility, SMEs in Burundi, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of Congo, Guinea, Mali and Togo will gain increased access to loans through Ecobank affiliates.

Albert Essien, Ecobank Group CEO, said: “Ecobank remains committed to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, and this facility will go a long way to giving SMEs in fragile states or those emerging from conflict the kind of access to finance that they need.”

IFC and Ecobank enjoy a long-standing collaboration dating back to 1993, through which they have delivered innovative and customized initiatives to underserved markets across sub-Saharan Africa.

Thanks to ETI’s unrivaled reach in SSA, IFC has been able to extend financial access in difficult environments at a scale that few other IFC-partner financial institutions can match.

Most recently, IFC extended an emergency liquidity facility in response to the Ebola crisis through Ecobank’s affiliates in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the most impacted countries.

ETI continues to be a key partner of IFC in the markets where it operates.