Africa’s trade finance landscape is shifting in ways that challenge long held assumptions. In this episode, Carter Hoffman speaks with Eugene Bempong Nyantakyi and Lamin Drammeh from the African Development Bank to unpack the findings of the Bank’s latest survey, the only systematic view of how African banks are supporting trade on the ground. They discuss why unmet demand has fallen from an estimated one hundred and twenty billion dollars a decade ago to seventy four billion today, even through a pandemic and a period of severe supply chain stress. The conversation explores how African banks have stepped into spaces international lenders left behind, why default rates do not justify the risk perceptions applied to small businesses, and what the data reveals about the parts of the market that remain invisible.

The discussion also turns to the pressures that could reverse recent gains. Foreign exchange liquidity constraints are rising, the dollar still dominates invoice flows, and global regulatory changes may tighten the room for international banks to operate. Drammeh and Nyantakyi reflect on the growth of regional banking groups, the role of PAPSS in reducing the cost of cross border payments, and the practical consequences when small firms are turned away or choose not to apply at all. Through stories such as a Mauritanian fishing business transformed by access to finance, the episode brings the data to life and asks whether the continent’s new financial cartographers can hold their ground when the next disruption arrives.