AfCFTA working capital & settlement

Africa’s traders are owed $81 billion in working capital. Every year.

That is the continent's annual trade-finance gap — creditworthy SME traders turned away for lack of collateral and paperwork. Sankofa Trade closes it by embedding bank-grade working capital and cross-border settlement directly into the trade corridors of the AfCFTA.

I'm a TraderI'm a Capital Partner

Bank of Ghana-regulated · PAPSS participant · Built in Accra

The trade-finance gap

A continent trading against itself

$81B
Africa’s annual trade-finance gapAfrican Development Bank
54
AfCFTA member states trading as one marketAfrican Union
1.3B
People inside the AfCFTA free-trade areaAfCFTA Secretariat
~50%
Of SME trade-finance requests in Africa are rejectedAfDB / WTO
The problem

Creditworthy, and still turned away

Intra-African trade is throttled not by demand but by finance. The traders moving goods across borders are exactly the ones the old system can't see.

No collateral, no facility

Banks want fixed assets and audited accounts. A trader running six figures through mobile money every month has neither — and gets declined.

The dollar detour

A Ghana–Nigeria payment routes through US-dollar correspondent banking: a fee at each hop and an FX spread that erases a thin margin.

Paperwork built to exclude

Letters of credit and days of documentation price out the SME trader entirely — the segment that needs the capital most.

How it works

Apply → underwrite → finance → settle → repay

Five steps, one phone, no branch visit. The whole cycle designed around how trade actually moves in West Africa.

  1. 01

    Apply from your phone

    Onboard with your national ID, connect your mobile-money history with consent, and upload a trade document — an invoice or purchase order.

  2. 02

    Underwritten on real data

    We score the cash flow your business already generates — not collateral you don’t have. Every score comes with its reasons, in plain language.

  3. 03

    Financed in hours

    A creditworthy trader is approved in 24–48 hours. Your rate is locked at approval, so FX movement can’t erode a thin-margin trade.

  4. 04

    Settled over PAPSS

    Pay a supplier across the border in local currency, settled between central banks — no dollar detour, no correspondent-bank spread, near-instant.

  5. 05

    Repay as you trade

    Repayment is matched to your trade cycle and collected via mobile money. Repay early with no penalty; your limit grows with your history.

See the full flow, illustrated →

Why Accra

Built from the home of the AfCFTA Secretariat

Sankofa Trade is not a Silicon-Valley product pointed at Africa. It is built in Accra, the city that hosts the AfCFTA Secretariat, with direct proximity to Ghana's Ministry of Trade and the institutions shaping continental integration. That closeness is a genuine, difficult-to-replicate advantage — regulatory relationships, corridor knowledge, and a launch market at the centre of the continent's trade-integration agenda.
  • Anchored in Ghana under Bank of Ghana regulation.
  • Corridor expansion sequenced by real trade-volume density — Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire next.
  • PAPSS-native settlement, not bolted on as an afterthought.
For capital partners

Deploy catalytic capital with full transparency

DFIs and impact debt funds fund the loan book; Sankofa Trade owns the underwriting, documentation and settlement. Partners get a real-time view of portfolio performance, explainable risk on every financed trade, and impact metrics suitable for their own stakeholder reporting — default rates, repayment velocity, and the SMEs and trade volume their capital enabled.
  • Explainable risk on every draw, before you approve it.
  • Portfolio performance computed from the ledger, not a spreadsheet.
  • Impact metrics: SMEs financed, trade volume enabled, corridor reach.
A regulated financial product

Built on trust, not hype

  • Bank of Ghana

    Partner-bank model

    Facilities originated with Bank of Ghana–licensed institutions while direct licensing is pursued.

  • KYC / AML

    FATF-aligned

    Risk-based identity verification and transaction monitoring on every trader and counterparty.

  • PAPSS

    Instant settlement

    Pan-African Payment & Settlement System — local-currency, near-instant cross-border settlement.

  • Act 843

    Data Protection

    Registered under Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012; data stays in-region and encrypted.

Two ways in

Whether you move goods or move capital, start here

Traders: turn your trade history into working capital in minutes. Capital partners: put catalytic capital to work with transparency built in.

Open an accountI'm a Capital Partner

Bank of Ghana-regulated · No collateral · No penalty for early repayment