Professor Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export -Import Bank (Afreximbank).

Professor Oramah will deliver a keynote lecture examining how multilateral finance institutions can drive socioeconomic transformation in Global Africa. Drawing from Afreximbank’s innovative approaches, the discussion will explore how financial institutions can reshape Africa’s position in the global economy.

Afrexim Bank has addressed finance as a critical fulcrum for African change and transformation in highly innovative ways. These have included expanding Africa’s economic reach through partnerships with African diaspora and the Carribbean. As well as centering creative economies as a growth engine, while challenging the subordination of Africa in the international finance system through the launch of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) to strengthen Africa’s financial independence.

These interventions are critical in creating highly original interdisciplinary ways of knowing and understanding Africa and coalesce around challenging dependency and thinking creatively about agency, self reliance and articulated economies. One of the biggest concerns about good ideas and policies in Africa is around how these might be deployed.

Against this background, the keynote addresses the following questions:

• What is African agency in an unequal international finance structure and how can it be deployed to good effect?
• What is the role of leadership in enabling African agency through continental institutions, such as Afrexim Bank?
• To what extent is the AfrEXIM Bank closing distances for Africans at national, continental and global levels?

This discussion will highlight innovative approaches to African development, emphasizing self-reliance, creative thinking and practical implementation of transformative policies.

Prof. Benedict Oramah is the President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export -Import Bank (Afreximbank).

He was previously appointed to the position of Executive Vice President of the Bank in October 2008, a position he held until his appointment as President in June 2015 during the 22nd Annual General meeting in Lusaka, Zambia and he was inaugurated in September 2015.

He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics obtained in 1991 and has been decorated as a Professor of International Trade and Finance by Adeleke University, one of Nigeria’s foremost private universities in 2018. Prof. Oramah worked as the Assistant Manager, Research, for the Nigerian Export-Import Bank from 1992 to 1994 before joining the African Export-Import Bank as Chief Analyst in 1994, rising to the position of Senior Director, Planning and Business Development Department, in 2007.

Prof. Oramah has written over 30 articles on a range of African economic and trade related matters, many of which have been published in leading international journals.