The African Development Bank Group convened over fifty global insurers, brokers, export credit agencies, and other risk mitigation stakeholders in Rabat, Morocco for its fourth annual Insurer and ECA Day. The event was held on 25 November on the side lines of the 2025 Africa Investment Forum Market Days.
The Insurer & ECA Day is a strategic platform to strengthen risk sharing and credit enhancement mechanisms to more effectively mobilise private capital at scale for Africa's development.
During the session, President Yuichiro Akita of the Berne Union officially announced that the Bank Group had become the first multilateral development bank to successfully join as a member; Berne Union is the world’s leading global association for the export credit and investment insurance industry. President Akita also noted that Berne Union members had deployed $140 billion in insurance capacity for emerging and developing markets in 2024.
The Bank's Chief Economist Dr. Kevin Chika Urama presented on Africa's resilient economic growth, noting that key sectors in Africa such as agricultural technologies and agribusiness would be worth $1 trillion by 2030; additionally, energy markets are projected to have a $1.3 trillion value in 2030, given that Africa possesses 48% of global renewable energy potential.
The Bank Group’s Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Hassatou Diop N'Sele emphasised the event's theme, Risk Sharing for Impact: Catalysing Investment Across Africa with Insurance and Guarantees. She said that the 2025 edition of Insurer and ECA day responded to feedback from previous years in which participants called for clearer visibility into the Bank's processes, project pipeline, earlier engagement, and more predictable collaboration frameworks. N’Sele stressed that the Bank is advancing private capital mobilisation through balance sheet optimisation and its syndications business, strengthening its partnerships with insurers and ECAs.
Max Ndiaye, Senior Director for Syndication, Africa Investment Forum and Client Solutions, highlighted how guarantees have become an important tool to mobilise insurance capacity. The African Development Bank Group has executed guarantee transactions with a nominal value of $2.3 billion since 2014 that have helped mobilise roughly $5.2 billion in private capital across eight countries.
Technical sessions featured discussion of risk allocation across sovereign and non-sovereign transactions, information needs for underwriting, and ways to integrate insurers and ECAs earlier in the project cycle. The Bank Group’s Risk Office explained the institution’s risk management activities and risk perception about the continent, noting that, based on the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database (GEMs), Africa represents the world’s best recovery rate on defaults.
The event concluded with a presentation of the African Development Bank’s 2026 pipeline of transactions, which is valued at over $20 billion. These include the $12 billion Bishoftu International Airport in Ethiopia and the Unicargas Project in Angola for which the Bank Group is a mandated lead arranger.
In closing remarks, Senior Vice President Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade lauded the Insurer and ECA Day as a core component of the Bank Group’s mobilisation agenda that is directly advancing the Four Cardinal Points vision of the new President Sidi Ould Tah.
