The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Standard Chartered have announced a new $300 million risk-sharing facility to strengthen supply chains and support business growth across Africa. The initiative will operate in eight countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia, and will focus on key sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and manufacturing. By introducing supply chain finance solutions, the program aims to ensure faster payments to suppliers, improve access to working capital, and enable businesses to invest in production, wages, and job creation.
The facility will support financing instruments such as payables finance, receivables discounting, and pre-shipment finance, helping smaller firms and SMEs access liquidity earlier in the business cycle. IFC will provide up to $150 million in guarantees, with an initial $100 million tranche, to reduce risk and enable lending in both U.S. dollars and selected local currencies. Over the next three years, the partnership is expected to facilitate around $1.9 billion in supply chain finance transactions, benefiting more than 500 suppliers and indirectly supporting over one million farmers across Africa.
Officials from IFC and Standard Chartered highlighted that supply chain finance is a critical tool for closing financing gaps faced by small and medium enterprises in emerging markets. The initiative is designed to strengthen linkages between large buyers and smaller suppliers, improve reliability across value chains, and unlock working capital that can drive productivity and employment.
The program also reflects broader efforts to expand access to trade and supply chain finance in regions where such services have not scaled at the same pace as global demand. While supply chain finance has grown significantly worldwide, emerging markets continue to face limited access due to perceived risks and constrained lending capacity among commercial banks. This facility seeks to address those barriers by reducing risk exposure and encouraging greater financial flows into underserved markets.
As IFC’s first project under its Global Supply Chain Finance Program and related Africa-focused initiatives, the partnership is positioned as a step toward more resilient and inclusive trade systems. It aims to support businesses of all sizes, from large corporations to small local suppliers, while promoting job creation, economic resilience, and stronger integration into regional and global value chains.
