As part of its work to make entrepreneurship more inclusive in the 22 member states it serves, the Eastern and Southern Africa Trade and Development Bank (TDB) signed a memorandum of understanding last Wednesday with Enat Bank.
The memorandum was signed by Admassu Tadesse, TDB President and Wondossen Teshome, Enat Bank President. According to their deal the two banks will collaborate on developing a pipeline of small and medium enterprises which qualify for export credit support involving a loan guarantee or other instruments, through a partnership with various stakeholders.
TDB President Admassu Tadesse during the signing ceremony said “We are pleased to offer a targeted SME partial-risk guarantee support facility to Enat Bank. We have been engaging with Enat Bank in Ethiopia for over a year and now selected it as one of our partners because of its unique ethos. This instrument is aimed at helping Enat Bank scale-up its impact, share their risk and reach out to more SMEs, particularly women-led and women-owned SMEs. We also hope that Enat will use this instrument to reach more young entrepreneurs and those companies employing youth.”
He pointed out that this is only a starting point, and that TDB expects to join forces with other international development partners to extend such facilities to other specialist financial institutions in its member countries. TDB launched its first facility in Zimbabwe in October 2018 and will be rolling out the programme to other Member States in the months to come, starting with Burundi and Kenya.
Established in 1985, the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (TDB), formerly the PTA Bank, is a multilateral, treaty-based development financial institution, with assets of over USD five billion. The Bank’s mandate is to finance and foster trade, regional economic integration and sustainable development, through trade finance, project and infrastructure finance, asset management and business advisory services.