The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and ZEP-RE (PTA Reinsurance Company) have entered a three-year partnership to strengthen professional skills and institutional capacity in trade, insurance, reinsurance, risk management and trade facilitation across African markets.
The partnership, formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), brings together the Afreximbank Academy (AFRACAD) and ZEP-RE Academy to develop training, research and knowledge programmes aimed at professionals and institutions involved in Africa’s trade and investment ecosystem.
The agreement was signed at ZEP-RE’s offices in Nairobi by Stephen Kauma, group managing director, Human Resources at Afreximbank, and Jephita Gwatipedza, group deputy chief executive officer and chief operating officer at ZEP-RE.
Under the agreement, the institutions will combine Afreximbank’s expertise in trade and trade finance with ZEP-RE’s experience in insurance, reinsurance and risk management to develop practical learning programmes for professionals and market participants.
The partnership will focus on three areas, beginning with the development of digital learning content through a joint “content factory”. The initiative will produce e-learning courses, toolkits and African case studies around identified industry needs, with the materials distributed through AFRACAD’s digital platform and ZEP-RE Academy’s learning management system.
The two institutions will also jointly develop professional and executive programmes covering areas such as risk and reinsurance, trade guarantees, trade facilitation, financial infrastructure and market development.
The programmes could include short courses, executive masterclasses and certification programmes delivered through physical, virtual and blended formats.
A third area will focus on research and knowledge creation through joint studies, webinars, policy discussions and industry forums involving practitioners, regulators, development partners and private-sector leaders.
Kauma said stronger trade and investment across Africa would require more than financial resources and physical infrastructure, pointing to the need for greater knowledge and institutional capacity.
“Africa’s ability to expand trade and investment depends on more than financial resources and infrastructure. It also depends on knowledge, skills and institutional capacity across our markets,” he said.
He added that combining the institutions’ expertise in trade finance, insurance, reinsurance and risk management would allow them to develop learning and knowledge programmes tailored to African markets.
Gwatipedza said the ability to expand trade sustainably also depended on how effectively institutions understood and managed the risks associated with cross-border transactions.
“Trade cannot expand sustainably unless the institutions that finance and facilitate it can also understand, price and manage the risks involved,” he said.
The new capacity-building agreement builds on an existing relationship between Afreximbank and ZEP-RE, including their work on the Trans-Africa Bond Alliance (TABA), launched in 2025 to strengthen insurance capacity and support cross-border trade and investment.
Since beginning operations in June 2025, TABA has supported approximately $185 million in bonds during 2025 and another $280 million in the first quarter of 2026, with risks originating from 24 cedents across five countries.
The alliance supports Afreximbank’s African Collaborative Transit Guarantee Scheme (AACTGS), which seeks to improve the movement of goods across African borders through a more harmonised and technology-enabled approach to transit guarantees.
The wider AACTGS has $1 billion in guarantee limits, including a $300 million facility being implemented with ZEP-RE in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region.
The scheme is designed to reduce the need for multiple national transit bonds, free up working capital that would otherwise be tied up as collateral and make cross-border trade more predictable.
The new MoU extends the relationship into professional development, with both institutions seeking to build a larger pool of African expertise capable of handling increasingly complex trade, finance, insurance and risk-management requirements.
