👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – CBN gives PoS agents more room

Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB), the country’s largest bank, has committed $1 billion over the next four years to expand its trade finance activity across the continent. The money will flow through credit facilities, letters of credit, guarantees, and other instruments that sit between a business and its ability to move goods across a border.

Africa’s trade finance gap is not a new problem. The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimated that between $74 billion and $92 billion worth of projects are underfunded; commercial banks have financed only 23% of the continent’s total trade between 2020 and 2024, down from 40% in the prior decade. 

Foreign currency shortages are the primary culprit, with more than a third of banks citing it as their main constraint. MCB’s $1 billion commitment is a deliberate move into a space most of its peers are hesitant about.

MCB has skin in this game beyond goodwill. Trade finance is one of its biggest revenue drivers. MCB earned MUR 12.1 billion ($270 million) from fees, commissions, and trading activity in the year ended June 2025, about 31% of its total operating income of MUR 38.5 billion ($813.3 million), with trade finance among the activities contributing to that income.

The more trade flows it facilitates, the more it earns. MCB sees a continental gap; its move here is to risk it all on an opportunity most other banks won’t touch.

For the rest of Africa, the stakes are obvious. Behind every dollar of that $92 billion gap is a real business: a manufacturer that could not source raw materials, a farmer that could not get paid for an export shipment, an SME that lost a contract because it could not provide a letter of credit. 

Development banks help, but they are slow, selective, and never enough. A commercial bank with the footprint, the expertise, and a financial incentive to close that gap is a different proposition entirely.