Abidjan, 30 May 2025 – Wednesday night in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on the margins of the 2025 Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank, prominent players in Africa’s banking and financial industry gathered at the distinguished African Banker Awards’ Gala Dinner – where several African development finance institutions were celebrated, alongside commercial banks and leading luminaries of the sector.
It was with great appreciation and honor that the Trade and Development Bank Group (TDB Group) received the distinction of Africa’s Bank of the Year – in recognition of the Bank’s focus on inclusiveness, service innovation, customer satisfaction, and contributing to the continent’s growth through a stronger financial sector.
TDB Group distinguishes itself in the market through its innovative spirit and its ongoing dedication to reform and improvement. Even in a rapidly changing operating environment, TDB Group delivers substantial development impact by upholding a strong commitment to excellence and demonstrating agility. This is accomplished through institutional innovation and robust partnerships that enable it to effectively adapt to the context in which it operates.
In 2024 in particular, TDB Group continued innovating its capital structure, introducing hybrid capital to continue crowding in more institutional investors in a suitable manner.
Thanks to its deep understanding of market dynamics and the needs of its member states, TDB evolved into a Group, positioning itself to broaden its triple bottom-line impact, enhance its sustainability, and extend its reach to additional jurisdictions, more end beneficiaries, including more vulnerable end beneficiairies.
The Trade and Development Banking Strategic Business Unit is the Group’s development banking arm, which offers bilateral and syndicated short-term trade and long-term project finance which meaningfully contributes to the economic, social and environmental development of member states.
Furthermore, through the Trade and Development Fund (TDF), the Group provides concessional financing to improve the terms of the financing to be deployed particularly towards public goods, technical assistance to address upstream challenges, as well as programme management which focuses on women empowerment, youth employment, MSMEs, and sustainable and responsible investments across different sectors.
Also, TDB Group’s asset management arm focuses on designing, originating, and growing stand-alone investment vehicles for a diverse range of investors and development partners. These vehicles which comprise specialised fund managers, funds and programmes are designed to meet the evolving needs and objectives of its diverse spectrum of stakeholders.
TDB Captive Insurance Company (TCI) streamlines risk management across the Group, thus further enhancing its efficiency and sustainability.
With TDB Academy, the capacity building arm of the Group, the Bank continues bolstering the capacity of its staff and of its stakeholders via training, seminars, conferences, and other human and institutional capacity development interventions. This boosts TDB Group’s own sustainability, and strengthens the capacity of its stakeholders.
This accolade highlights how the various pieces of the TDB Group mosaic are crafted and integrated, highlighting the remarkable agility with which these pieces seamlessly unite and synergize in this dynamic environment.
About TDB Group
Established in 1985, the Trade and Development Bank Group (TDB Group) is an African regional multilateral development bank, with a mandate to finance and foster trade, regional economic integration and sustainable development in Africa. TDB Group counts several subsidiaries and strategic business units including Trade and Development Banking, TDB Asset Management (TAM), the Trade and Development Fund (TDF), TDB Captive Insurance Company (TCI), the ESATAL fund management company and TDB Academy.