(Bloomberg) -- The Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, or Badea, is making billions of dollars of funding available to nations in the south of the continent to help promote integration and industrialization, the lender’s president said.
Badea has already invested more than $2 billion in the Southern African Development Community’s 16 member states and has now raised another $6 billion from institutions in the Arab Coordination Group that they can tap, Sidi Ould Tah told reporters Wednesday in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.
Owned by 18 Arab countries, Badea began operating in 1975 and aims to strengthen economic, financial and technical cooperation between Arab and African states. It relocated its headquarters to Riyadh last year after civil war broke out in Sudan.
Badea wants African countries to be able to develop without having to raise additional debt and is working with sovereign wealth funds in its member states to invest in private business in the continent, according to Tah.
“We will spare no effort to bring the needed capital to the region in terms of equity, in terms of soft loans, in terms of technical-assistance grants and in terms of trade financing to make it easier to develop the cross-border trade as part of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement,” he said.
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--With assistance from Desmond Kumbuka.
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