Ed Harkins has resigned from his role at Barclays and joined Fieldstone as head of export credit financing for its African business.

In an interview with GTR, Harkins says that he left the bank at the end of June after nearly 11 years of service, most recently as the head of its emerging markets capex financing solutions team.

London-based Harkins officially started his role at the advisory-oriented investment bank, which focuses on infrastructure and energy financing, on October 1, 2014.

Fieldstone has a particular focus on African infrastructure financing through its London and Johannesburg offices. There are 50 members of the team, half of whom are purely focused on African business.

Harkins says to GTR: “When I was at Barclays, I helped to create and drive the development of the ECA advisory business, particularly looking at Africa. Fieldstone is very active in Sub-Sahara Africa and has a big infrastructure business. It just seemed like a natural fit for me.”

He adds: “With initiatives like Power Africa, from the US, a lot of agencies now have a lot more appetite in Africa.”

Before joining up with Fieldstone, Harkins conducted some pro-bono work for UK Export Finance (UKEF), assisting the agency with the development of its new products.

The work was as a result of Harkins’ role in previously running the British Bankers Association (BBA) export finance working groups for direct lending and export refinancing.

“We’re currently working on a number of African initiatives in the Sub-Saharan region,” Harkins says about his strategy moving forwards. “For UK suppliers, what I will be looking to do is leverage off some of the work that I’ve done on the development of the new UKEF direct lending and export refinancing products to assist UK suppliers secure and win new business overseas. In Africa, Fieldstone has a market leading franchise and unrivalled track record and I will be looking to build on this to deliver structured export finance solutions to Fieldstone’s clients.”

Fieldstone has completed “over US$50bn-worth of infrastructure deals globally” to date, says Harkins.