The ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development has signed an EUR 80 million financing agreement with Coris Holding to expand credit for productive sectors across West Africa. The transaction was executed on 30 July at EBID’s headquarters in Lomé and directs development-bank funding through an established regional banking network.
The facility is intended for projects and businesses in food, energy and agricultural value chains. Rather than lending directly to a single company or project, EBID will strengthen the refinancing capacity of Coris Holding’s banking subsidiaries, which can then extend credit to businesses operating in those sectors.
Small and medium-sized enterprises and industries are a stated priority. Coris already finances companies in the markets where its banks operate, and the new line is designed to increase the subsidiaries’ room to lend to firms that create local value and employment. The agreement does not identify individual borrowers or a pre-approved project list.
EBID President George Agyekum Donkor and Coris Holding Managing Director Diakarya Ouattara signed the facility in the presence of officials from both institutions. EBID is the development finance institution established by the 15 ECOWAS member states, while Coris supplies the commercial distribution channel for the funds.
The structure addresses a persistent financing constraint in the region: productive companies often need maturities and loan capacity that local banks cannot fund entirely from short-term deposits. A development-bank line can lengthen or supplement that funding base, but the ultimate economic effect will depend on how Coris subsidiaries price, select and monitor the downstream loans.
The announcement specifies the EUR 80 million headline amount and the target sectors, but it does not disclose the interest rate, maturity, repayment schedule, disbursement conditions or country-by-country allocation. It also provides no binding estimate for the number of enterprises, jobs or projects that will be financed, leaving those outcomes to implementation.
For EBID, the operation fits its Growth, Resilience and Optimisation strategy, which places private-sector finance and regional integration alongside inclusive and sustainable growth. For Coris, the facility expands the balance-sheet resources available to its subsidiaries without replacing their responsibility for credit assessment and portfolio performance.
The next measurable steps are the drawdown of the facility, allocation among participating Coris banks and disclosure of the loans that reach food, energy and agricultural operators. Those data will show whether the agreement produces additional long-term credit or mainly refinances lending that the network would have undertaken anyway.
