Africa is facing a massive $100 billion annual trade finance shortfall that is increasingly undermining efforts to unlock the full potential of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), according to the African Trade Report 2025 released by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).

The report, titled “African Trade in a Changing Global Financial Architecture,” paints a sobering picture of the financial obstacles impeding the continent’s economic integration goals.

The bank warns that unless this funding gap is addressed urgently, Africa’s efforts to boost intra-regional trade and establish resilient supply chains through the AfCFTA will stall. Despite efforts to increase trade within the continent, only 18% of African banks’ trade finance portfolios currently support intra-African trade, highlighting a continued bias towards external trade and a lack of support for local value chains.

“This severely limits the ability of small and medium enterprises, which make up 80 to 90 percent of businesses on the continent, to engage in regional trade,” Afreximbank stated.

AfCFTA: A $3.4 Trillion Market at Risk

The AfCFTA, officially launched in January 2021, aims to create a unified African market of 1.4 billion people with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion. It is one of the African Union’s most ambitious economic integration initiatives under Agenda 2063, intended to eliminate trade barriers, reduce tariffs, and facilitate the movement of goods, services, and people across the continent.

According to the African Union, successful implementation of the AfCFTA could boost intra-African trade by more than 50% by 2030, foster industrialization, create millions of jobs, and reduce poverty levels. However, these goals remain elusive in the face of financial exclusion and fragmented regulatory systems.

“The AfCFTA is designed to boost intra-African trade, but its success hinges on closing this gap,” the report noted, adding that limited access to affordable credit has left SMEs unable to scale and plug into continental value chains.

Afreximbank has attempted to address these gaps through its $17.5 billion in trade finance disbursements and the launch of initiatives such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), which enables cross-border transactions in local currencies. However, these steps fall short of solving the broader structural problems, including high borrowing costs, lack of harmonized regulations, and weak financial infrastructure.

External Headwinds and Global Trade Shifts

Beyond internal challenges, the report also highlights external pressures. Africa’s share of global exports has declined from 3.5% in 2009 to 3.2% in 2023, a drop attributed largely to geopolitical tensions, protectionist trade policies, and the continent’s continued reliance on exporting raw materials rather than processed goods.

The report identifies escalating competition between China and the United States, particularly over access to critical minerals and semiconductor technologies, as key factors disrupting global supply chains. These shifts have left Africa’s extractive economies exposed to market volatility and reduced their participation in high-value sectors like electronics and green energy.

“The rivalry between the United States and China over semiconductors and critical minerals disrupts supply chains, limiting Africa’s participation in high-value sectors,” Afreximbank said.

At the same time, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and new U.S. tariffs are beginning to hurt African exports by penalizing carbon-intensive goods, further squeezing economies dependent on primary commodity exports.

Despite Africa’s rich deposits of lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements—resources increasingly in demand for global clean energy transitions—the report warns that foreign investment models continue to prioritize extraction over local beneficiation, perpetuating a cycle of economic dependency.

Policy Recommendations

The report calls for the urgent mobilization of resources and political will to address the continent’s financial bottlenecks. Among its recommendations:

• Expand local credit facilities targeted at SMEs
• Harmonize regulatory frameworks across African financial institutions
• Increase investment in cross-border infrastructure and digital trade platforms
• Strengthen institutions like Afreximbank and African Development Bank to scale up support

The bank emphasized that without deliberate and coordinated efforts to close the trade finance gap, Africa risks missing the transformative opportunity presented by the AfCFTA.

“Strengthening African-led value chains and investing in infrastructure and digital finance are essential to enhance resilience and reduce reliance on volatile global markets,” the report concluded.

The flagship report was unveiled at the Afreximbank Annual Meetings, with key stakeholders in attendance including Prof. Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman of Afreximbank; Vice President Kashim Shettima (represented by Mr. Tope Fasua); and Denys Denya, Senior Executive Vice President of Afreximbank. The launch underscored the urgent need for a paradigm shift in Africa’s trade financing architecture to match the scale and ambition of the AfCFTA.

Google is doubling down on AI-driven monetization for digital publishers with the broader rollout of its AI-powered Offerwall, a flexible tool designed to help media sites convert casual readers into revenue streams.

The move comes at a critical time for the publishing industry, which has been grappling with declining ad revenues, tightening privacy rules, and reduced search traffic — now compounded by Google’s own AI-generated search overviews.

At the heart of Offerwall is artificial intelligence, which Google uses to determine the most effective moments to display the tool to site visitors. The goal is to maximize engagement and monetization without disrupting the user experience. For publishers who prefer a manual approach, Google allows them to set custom thresholds for triggering the Offerwall.

This latest tool allows site visitors to unlock content in several ways: by watching a short ad, making a small one-time payment for timed access (e.g., 24 hours), signing up for a subscription, or selecting preferred content topics, which are then used for ad personalization.

Google has integrated Offerwall with Ad Manager and is partnering with Supertab to facilitate seamless microtransactions. The company says publishers can fully customize the Offerwall interface — from branding and messaging to the monetization options presented to users. The ad-supported unlock option includes revenue sharing, operating under the same model as existing AdSense and Ad Manager structures.

Why Now? The AI Overviews Connection

This development follows closely on the heels of Google’s controversial launch of AI Overviews in its search engine — summaries generated by its large language models that appear at the top of results pages. While Google claims these overviews enhance user experience, publishers have raised alarm bells, arguing they reduce traffic to original content by giving users enough information to skip clicking through.

In essence, Google is now simultaneously disrupting and attempting to compensate publishers, offering monetization alternatives through tools like Offerwall, even as its core search business undermines traditional click-based traffic models.

Analysts say Offerwall is part of Google’s broader effort to rebuild trust with publishers amid growing tension over the impact of AI on news and content distribution. The tech giant hopes to counter criticism that it’s draining value from the web without sharing sufficient upside with content creators by giving websites more granular control over how and when they monetize.

Mixed Track Record on Micropayments

Offerwall isn’t the first attempt to create alternative monetization strategies. Similar ideas — especially micropayments — have been tried and failed many times. Startups like Post, a Twitter-like platform backed by Andreessen Horowitz, attempted to build a pay-per-article system for news content but folded due to lack of traction.

The main challenges have been user friction, low adoption rates, and limited returns that don’t justify the cost of implementation for many publishers. However, Google’s dominance and infrastructure — including billions of daily users and seamless payment systems — could give Offerwall a better chance at survival.

Performance So Far

Although Google has not released comprehensive case studies, early data points suggest modest success. A pilot with India’s Sakal Media Group on esakal.com resulted in a 20% revenue increase and up to 2 million additional ad impressions over a three-month period.

Across the broader test pool, publishers saw average revenue lifts of 5% to 15%, with AdSense publishers earning an average 9% increase per 1 million Offerwall interactions. Publishers can track engagement and financial performance via built-in Ad Manager reports that detail metrics such as Offerwall revenue, engagement rates, and page views following interactions.

A Hedge Against an Uncertain Future

Google’s push for Offerwall also reflects its desire to diversify how publishers make money, particularly in a climate where traditional display advertising is increasingly unreliable due to ad blockers, privacy regulations, and diminishing third-party cookies.

The company is positioning Offerwall as a low-friction way to experiment with monetization, without requiring publishers to commit upfront resources or overhaul their websites. Publishers can run multiple configurations and analyze which model — ads, micropayments, or subscriptions — resonates most with their audience.

However, some are skeptical, arguing that no matter how seamless the platform is, readers remain reluctant to pay per article, and asking them to watch ads or provide personal preferences may not scale across news sites with niche audiences.

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has sounded the alarm over the continent’s deepening reliance on foreign healthcare, estimating that Africa loses about $7 billion every year to medical tourism, a trend that not only bleeds foreign exchange but also cripples efforts to develop sustainable healthcare systems across the region.

At the 32nd Afreximbank Annual Meetings (AAM2025) held in Abuja, Nigeria, Mrs. Oluranti Doherty, the Bank’s Export Development Managing Director, described the situation as a serious economic and developmental crisis, noting that Nigeria alone accounts for a staggering $1.1 billion of the continent’s annual medical tourism losses.

“That’s money going to other economies, building their institutions, while weakening ours,” Doherty told delegates, which included heads of state, ministers, private sector players, and trade policymakers.

A Systemic Economic Drain

The outflow of funds is compounded by the loss of skilled professionals—a trend often referred to as brain drain—as Africa’s best medical minds continue to relocate to the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, lured by better remuneration, research facilities, and working conditions.

“The best of talents in the health sector were going out of the continent,” Doherty said, “and that often was an issue.”

This mass exodus of healthcare workers, coupled with a population that increasingly seeks treatment abroad, leaves many African nations with under-resourced and overstretched public health systems, unable to cope with the rising burden of chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Medical Tourism and the FX Crisis

The warning from Afreximbank also comes amid Africa’s worsening foreign exchange challenges, especially in major economies like Nigeria, where a prolonged dollar scarcity has paralyzed import-dependent sectors. The $1.1 billion Nigeria loses to foreign hospitals each year not only aggravates the forex crisis but also undermines local capacity building in a sector essential for national development.

The irony, observers note, is that many African patients head abroad for procedures that could be handled locally—if there were trust, investment, and infrastructure in place.

Afreximbank’s Bold Intervention

To tackle this problem at its roots, Afreximbank has made healthcare one of its strategic pillars. Doherty recalled that as far back as 2012, the bank launched a Health and Medical Tourism Programme, aimed at redirecting Africa’s capital and talent into the local healthcare economy.

At the center of this effort is the Africa Medical Center of Excellence (AMCE), a high-tech 170-bed facility under construction in Abuja, which has so far attracted over $450 million in investment from Afreximbank.

The hospital is equipped with advanced medical technology, including:

• An 18 MeV cyclotron for producing radioisotopes used in cancer treatment,
• A three-Tesla MRI machine for high-resolution imaging,
• A 20-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for critical care services.

“We recognized this issue long ago and decided to do something about it,” Doherty said. “The AMCE will deliver care at global standards, not just African standards.”

The Trust Deficit in African Healthcare

Despite these bold investments, Doherty acknowledged that rebuilding public trust in local healthcare facilities remains a major hurdle.

“I’m talking about global standards. I’m talking about Africans coming up with solutions to challenges,” she said.

Experts note that without addressing this trust gap, even the most technologically advanced hospitals on the continent may struggle to reverse the tide of outbound medical tourism.

Broader Economic and Industrial Goals

Beyond health, the initiative aligns with Afreximbank’s goal of transforming Africa into a net exporter of services and manufactured goods. The bank not only aims to retain African wealth but also turn the continent into a destination for medical travel, eventually attracting patients from other regions.

Furthermore, the AMCE model is expected to spur industrial growth, including local pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical equipment supply chains, training institutions, and R&D collaborations—sectors that can generate jobs, boost innovation, and curb reliance on imports.