IFC’s notable transactions in year to June 2009

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank group, committed investments in the following African countries last year: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.

• IFC invested $18 million to help Green Resources plant 8,000 hectares of new forest in Tanzania. Green Resources will generate carbon credits from its operations, which it will sell directly to buyers from developed countries.
• IFC created a new private equity fund for Africa’s health sector, with the African Development Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the German development finance institution DEG – Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH. The fund reached a first closing of $57 mln (target $100-120 mln) to invest in small- and medium-sized companies, such as health clinics and diagnostic centers, to help low-income Africans gain access to affordable, high-quality health services.
• IFC provided a financing package of over $200 million to Ecobank Transnational Inc., a pan-African bank with a network of over 500 branches in 27 countries. The financing will support the bank’s expansion, promote lending to micro and smaller, and facilitate trade flows to the region
• IFC provided a $30 million guarantee facility to Stanbic Bank Ghana to help it increase financing to companies that purchase cocoa from small farmers in Ghana.
• IFC will provide a loan of $100 million to Kosmos Energy, one of the key partners developing Ghana’s offshore oil and gas Jubilee field, located in deep water some 60 kilometers off the coast of Ghana. The project will help diversify Ghana’s economy, meet domestic power demand, and generate revenue to support the country’s economic growth and development. IFC’s loan is part of a $750 million debt package for U.S.-based Kosmos that IFC helped mobilize, primarily from commercial banks. IFC also signed a $115 million loan agreement with British Tullow Oil, another key Jubilee partner, bringing IFC’s support for the project to $215 million. Kosmos and Tullow are independent oil and gas exploration and production companies.
• In Uganda, IFC signed its first risk sharing facility involving small and medium enterprises in the telecommunications sector. This project enables distributors of Zain products and services access to medium term financing through Stanbic Bank Uganda. IFC expects to see more projects of this nature in other parts of Africa.
• IFC provided $100 million in financing as part of a $400 million package to support Standard Bank’s trade-related lending in Africa. The transaction was part of IFC’s Global Trade Liquidity Program, which is expected to support up to $50 billion in trade in emerging markets and have a significant impact in Africa, where supporting continued access to finance is one of IFC’s priorities.

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