Marking 25 years of impact, ATIDI CEO Manuel Moses reflects on the organisation’s journey from bold beginnings to becoming a key player in transforming risk into opportunity across Africa.
ATIDI is celebrating its 25th anniversary. In 2000, when seven African countries (Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) established the then-called African Trade Insurance Agency, our continent was famously dubbed “hopeless”. Investing in the “hopeless continent” was a leap of faith, and figures proved it.
Back then, Africa could only attract a very bleak US$17bn in FDI. The vision shared by our founding members to set up a credible African risk-mitigating mechanism was bold and visionary. It was also a sound business decision.
A legacy of growth
Today, ATIDI has grown into the leading development insurer on the continent, a respected player in its industry, a resilient performer year after year, a highly ranked provider by rating agencies, and a trusted peer among its clients and partners.
We have grown our footprint, from seven countries in 2001 to 24 member states and 13 institutional shareholders today. We have also grown our business, covering US$8.9bn in transactions in 2024 and enabling over US$88bn across Africa since our inception.
We have enhanced our product offering, trickling down our value-add to vital sectors for Africa’s economic emergence: energy access with our Regional Liquidity Support Facility, SME financing with our Portfolio Risk Sharing Agreement and cross-border trade with the Regional Customs Transit Guarantee Scheme. Each solution is tailored to reduce barriers, unlock capital and empower countries to deliver real and sustainable change.
Catalysing development where it matters most
This growing and improved performance is a testament to our solid business model and processes, our deep and dynamic market insights, and the relationships we have with our stakeholders in Africa and around the world, as well as our high values and standards, to name a few.
We also leverage our Preferred Creditor Status (PCS), which is entrenched in our member states’ participation agreements, allowing us to preserve all parties when investments face unforeseen challenges and pave the way for future collaboration.
Our efforts are recognised, as shown by the ‘DFI of the Year’ award that we earned at the prestigious African Banker’s awards in May 2025.
ATIDI is central to the solution to Africa’s mind-boggling development finance challenge.
Turning risks into opportunities
Despite relative progress, the continent is still very far from bridging its financial gap. In 2024, foreign investment in Africa shot up by 75% to reach a record US$97bn, representing 6% of global FDI, compared to 4% the year before. Encouraging as it may be, this figure pales in comparison to the estimated US$170bn needed annually to address shortfalls in energy, water and transport infrastructure alone.
There is also a human story behind those figures: with a median age of 19 and 70% of its population aged below 30, Africa is home to around 1 billion youths who, if not empowered by the continent’s sustainable economic emergence, could shatter the much-anticipated demographic dividend.
There is no denying that – unfortunately – certain risks to investment in Africa persist. Debt distress, political volatility, growing insecurity linked to terrorism, persisting gaps in governance and many more constrain investor appetite for the continent as well as access to affordable finance for African economies.
The perceived or actual African risk stifles the prospects of the African Continental Free Trade Area, the world’s largest free trade area by number of member states and a continental market of 1.5 billion citizens and consumers. It also overshadows Africa’s attractive returns on investment, estimated at 6.5% in 2019, higher than 6.2% and 6% of Latin America and the Caribbean, and developed nations, respectively.
That is where ATIDI has been vital in turning African risks into opportunities. From our first cover to help modernise Burundi’s Brarudi’s brewery, to supporting the construction of Rwanda’s new international airport, or providing a second-loss guarantee to enable the government of Benin to undertake a critical debt reprofiling exercise and allotting the resulting savings to finance expenditures under the country’s SDG framework, our organisation has come in as a crucial and innovative enabler of transformative projects across the continent. The transaction in Benin, for example, was the first covered by the World Bank’s new Guarantee Platform.
We are now braced to do much more.
A new chapter, a renewed purpose
We have embarked on several initiatives to reach the ambitious goals of our 2023-27 strategy. First, we rebranded to the African Trade & Investment Development Insurance, ATIDI, to better capture our development vision and our values. We are now growing our capital, by increasing our number of member states and shareholders, enroute to one day count each African country as a shareholder.
We are sparing no effort to uphold our PCS, which is an integral part of our value-add, our uniqueness and credibility. We are also optimising our products and processes to offer excellence as a standard to our clients. Last but not least, we are leveraging our partnerships, as we advocate for collaboration rather than competition in solving Africa’s development challenges.
Partnerships are at the core of ATIDI’s DNA. The organisation was created as part of a collaborative effort between COMESA and the World Bank. We have built a strong bond with the leading African and global development bodies, including the African Union, COMESA, the African Development Bank, the West African Development Bank, the African Solidarity Fund, the European Investment Bank, KfW Development Bank, NORAD and the World Bank Group. Beyond any consideration, collaboration in the development ecosystem is a no-brainer, given the scale of Africa’s development challenges.
Looking ahead: A continent of possibility
As we close the page to a quarter of a century of catalysing Africa’s development, we do so with gratitude for those who helped create ATIDI, and we remain committed and optimistic about our mission and what the future holds for us and the continent. One of the Covid-19 pandemic’s harshest insights is that business unusual may be the new norm and that economic volatility and risk will remain inherent to any investment decision.
At ATIDI, we will turn them into opportunities. We remain driven by the same spirit of possibility that conceptualised ATIDI 25 years ago – a belief that Africa’s future is not just worth insuring, but worth building.
