Benedict Oramah has completed his ten-year tenure as the President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), ending two terms that started in 2015 and a career at the bank that began in 1994. The Nigerian national, now 64, took over the bank’s top leadership in September 2015. He had previously served as the Executive Vice President in charge of Business Development and Corporate Banking from October 2008 at the same bank. Oramah joined the bank in March 1994 as one of its first employees where he was the Chief Analyst. He rose through the ranks over the years, serving as the Director of the Business Planning and Development Department in 2004, and later the Executive Vice-President of Business Development and Corporate Banking in 2008. “He confronted the challenges of Africa’s industrial underdevelopment head-on, building on the work of those who came before us,” George Elombi, the bank’s incoming President, said of Oramah’s legacy. In the capital Cairo, Egypt, where the Farewell Conference & Investiture Conference is taking place, Elombi praised his predecessor for growing Afreximbank from a relatively small institution with only $6 billion in assets in 2015 to slightly over $40 billion today. “Oramah has turned the bank into Africa’s supermarket, an institution with the sweat of solutions to our challenges for development. He has also turned decades and centuries-old political wishes into tangible gains,” Elombi noted. Professor Oramah, an agricultural economist by profession, served as the President and Chairman of the Bank for two consecutive terms. Before shareholders of the bank renewed his second term in 2020, Afreximbank had disbursed more than $30 billion in support of African trade with over $15 billion channeled towards the financing and promotion of intra-African trade between 2015 and 2019. At the time, particularly during the 27th Annual General Meeting in Cairo, he committed to double intra-African trade financing. “We will aim to double intra-African trade financing so that by the end of my term, it will constitute no less than 40% of the Bank’s total assets, with aggregate disbursements, on a revolving basis, over the 5 years exceeding $30 billion,” he said. Indeed, he has not fallen short of that. Under his leadership, Afreximbank’s asset base has increased from about $6 billion as of June 2015 to $37.6 billion as of end September this year. According to Chandi Mwenebungu, Managing Director and Group Treasurer, Afreximbank, one of Professor Oramah’s flagship projects is the Central Bank Deposit Program (CENDEP), an initiative that was launched in 2014 to mobilise foreign exchange reserves of African and diaspora. “We started with only $75 million. Today, we have cumulatively raised the tune of $45.6 billion in the space of just 11 years. We raise money through syndications, and we have seen an increase in participation from 11 banks before 2014 to now 29,” he said. The bond programme has grown from just $1.5 billion in 2014 to $5 billion under Oramah’s leadership, with the bank expanding its fundraising activities overseas, including a recent $530 million Samurai bond that was issued in Japan in 2024, as well as a $303 million panda bond that was issued in China this year. Elombi, who replaces Oramah, is expected to officially swear in tomorrow as Afreximbank’s fourth President.
