Africa Trade Exchange platform onboards 500 merchants across Africa
The 54th Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development officially opened earlier this year with the launch of The Africa Trade Exchange, a business-to-business /business-to-government e-commerce platform. President Macky Sall of Senegal was present. The platform has now onboarded 500 suppliers and buyers, accelerating its user signups significantly over the past few months.
In the short months since the site began operating, it has generated agreements worth over US$40 million at various levels of financing. With an emphasis on urgent crisis needs like fertilizer and grains as well as longer-term prospects due to the digitalization of the supply chain, it has been rapidly expanding after being introduced in over 25 nations.
The ATEX platform features four broad product categories, namely: Agricultural products, Fertilizers and Inputs, Food and beverages and Others. A key way that ATEX assists in realizing the development potential of e-commerce and digitization in Africa is by making it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to join new markets across the African Continent. This would help African enterprises optimize their trade within Africa and their standing in the global market.
ATEX seeks to assist small, medium, and big African firms in accessing new markets inside the continent in order to optimize their supply chains and promote faster economic growth. It enables bulk purchases of essential goods to guarantee that countries have transparent access to rare supplies.
ATEX was created to support the AfCFTA’s goals and boost intra-African trade. The Africa Trade Exchange platform is essential in addressing the continent’s present food and agricultural security problems in light of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis.
This is accomplished by fostering connectivity and market strength through coordinated purchasing and the use of technology to facilitate trade across the continent. with a hub for locating partners and trade finance options as well as payment and logistical service providers.
According to Emeka Uzoigwe of Afreximbank “ATEX will become the largest B2B/ B2G platform for trade in Africa. Leveraging technology and innovative solutions to bring transparency and efficiency to the supply chain on the continent,”
Registration on the ATEX platform is simple and straignforward. To register, all that a merchant, buyer or seller, of any of the product categories needs to do is go to register in Atex.africa, input the required details and upload the business registration documents.
