GTR returned to Cape Town for its Africa Trade Finance Week 2013, the newly extended version of the Annual Africa Trade & Export Finance Conference, which took place on March 4-6.

Firmly established as the most comprehensive gathering for Africa-focused trade and export finance professionals in the market, much was discussed over the course of the three days, in a format that incorporated various workshops, stream sessions, training simulations and networking functions, with increasing attention turning towards Africa and the trade flow potential offered by its vast commodity resources.

Discussions centred on a range of topics, with the impact of the global economic slowdown, the Eurozone debt crisis and tougher capital requirements on international bank lending into Africa being a key theme, with trading companies now increasingly turning to finance African trade transactions, at a time when the continent’s trade continues to grow across a broad range of sectors and geographies.

“The scale of trade finance opportunity is substantial when considering that Africa’s exports alone grew to $500 billion (R4.5 trillion) in 2012 from $445bn in 2011,” said Craig Polkinghorne, Global Head of Structured Trade & Commodity Finance at Standard Bank, lead sponsors of the event. “It is something of a phenomenon that the general tightening of global credit continues to curtail availability of commodity trade finance from the traditionally dominant players, even as African countries ramp up trade relations with the fastest-growing economies.”

Polkinghorne added that many banks had reviewed risk appetite and had withdrawn from or limited their exposure to trade finance in Africa, creating an opportunity for other industry players to fill the vacuum. “This has created great opportunities for African banks to be more active in trade finance because they have strong balance sheets, the necessary capital and liquidity, and risk appetite. For domestic currency transactions they also have competitive funding costs compared to global counterparts.”

Around 300 delegates were in attendance over the course of the event, which also incorporated a Risk Decision-Making Workshop in collaboration with ratings agency Moody’s and The Cool Connection, a web-based supply chain simulation workshop organised to engage participants in supply chain management, purchasing, sales and finance.

“Rest assured, Africa is now very much seen as the place to do business in global trade,” said Peter Gubbins, Managing Director of GTR. “The interest shown in this market by all manner of global institutions and organisations throughout the world and the sheer number of notable transactions we see taking place here reaffirms the wider significance of the market.”

The event concluded with the presentation of the GTR Africa Leaders in Trade Awards 2012, followed by the magazine’s Africa Editorial Board Meeting, published in the May-June 2013 issue of GTR.