Q. Who is Bpifrance?
Created in 2012 and owned by the French State and Groupe CDC, the French Public Investment Bank, Bpifrance, is a key partner to companies, banks and investors. The group offers a continuum of solutions adapted to each key stage of a company’s growth: business creation, financing, guarantees, equity investment, export finance and insurance.
Bpifrance Assurance Export, the French Export Credit Agency, (ECA) is a subsidiary of Bpifrance, mandated by law, and acting in the name, on behalf and under the control of the French State that delivers credit insurance, export bond and working capital insurance, exchange risk insurance, strategic project insurance and investment insurance.
Q. How much of your business is political and commercial risk insurance in sub-Sahara Africa?
Sub-Sahara Africa represents around 15% of the ECA’s global exposure and the number of demands for new commitments to Africa reached 40% of the total number of demands in H1 of 2022.
Q. What are your main strategies for the African business?
Our main strategies rely on cooperation. We focus on multiplying partnerships (through MoUs and reinsurance agreements), developing complementary activities with DFIs (e.g. AFD and Proparco), maintaining strong relationships with the French embassies in Africa, and strengthening collaboration with the “Team France Export”. We also support EPC contracts cooperating with French SMEs to promote business, development, and growth in Africa, and create more opportunities for French companies.
Q. What have been the greatest challenges in your ability to provide guarantees in Africa?
The greatest challenges we are facing are the critical situation of the countries in debt distress, the political instability, and our high exposure on some countries which restrains the amount of new support we can provide.
Q. How have you managed to mitigate the challenges?
High debt and political instability are challenges all ECAs are facing when supporting their exports to Africa. We have chosen to stay open where many have closed, and opted for risk sharing through reinsurance with other ECAs and with multilaterals such as ATI. We are currently in the process of signing a reinsurance agreement with ATI.
Our answer to the high exposure we face on some countries is once again risk sharing, we are therefore establishing reinsurance of different projects via the private sector.
We have 5 regional offices on the continent (in Abidjan, Casablanca, Nairobi, Dakar, and upcoming in Johannesburg). They work in close collaboration with our 50 Regional Directorates and head offices in France to encourage and facilitate business flows between French companies and public and private African partners/buyers.
What strategic importance does the Africa portfolio play in the Bank’s overall growth strategy?
Africa is Bpifrance’s most strategic export region. Our priorities are to support SMEs in Africa, not only with our export credit insurance (more than half of the contracts we support on the continent are from SMEs) but also through commercial export finance with 69% of the financing facilities signed for a total of €320M in 2022 (with 85% of the agreements being signed with SMEs).
Q. What opportunities do you see in Africa now and moving forward?
One of the core values of Bpifrance is optimism. Even when the economy indicates a difficult future, we try and give our best to support projects of development on the African continent.
More than half of the global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. This growth comes with its set of opportunities. Infrastructure, healthcare, clean energies, transportation and water resources are key sectors for both the development of the African continent and the French export. We see great opportunities in these sectors, in which we are already providing support and will continue to do so.
