FMO provides €10M senior loan to Bank of Africa Holding

Microfinance Focus, Dec. 21, 2009: The Netherlands Finance Development Company (FMO) will provide a €10 million senior loan to Bank of Africa Holding (BOA), the FMO announced in a statement. The funding will be used to strengthen the capital of the local affiliates and will be employed for further expansion and setting up new banks in low-income countries.

BOA is one of the few ‘indigenous’ pan-African universal banking groups with a strong footprint in Low Income Countries (LICs), according to a press release by FMO.

“Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest region in the world and contains some of the least developed countries in the world. Expansion of the retail-banking segment has become a priority because of the large unmet demand in that sector,” commented Jurgen Rigterink, FMO’s Chief Investment Officer.

“Access to finance is the cornerstone to a viable economy and helps people improve their own living standards,” Mr. Rigterink added.

In the past few years BOA has expanded its retail network extensively and it will continue to do so in the coming years. The expansion will be achieved not only in countries where BOA recently started (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi) and in new markets such as Congo DRC and Togo, but also in the existing network.

The Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) is the international development bank of the Netherlands. FMO invests risk capital in companies and financial institutions in developing countries, and has an investment portfolio of € 4.2 billion.

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