Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. CBZ Holdings and a unit of Afreximbank, Africa Trade Development Co (ATDC), have combined forces to create a company that will drive the exportation of local agricultural products.
The joint venture company will also facilitate the importation of inputs such as fertiliser.
The agreement to form a joint company, ATDC Zimbabwe, was signed by ATDC chief executive officer Abdoul Aziz Ba and Wellington Mutizwa, the general manager of CBZ Agro-Yield, on the sidelines of IATF2025 in Algiers, Algeria, on Friday.
ATDC and CBZ will jointly own the new entity, ATDC Zimbabwe.
The CBZ, ATDC marriage represents Afreximbank’s ambitious plan to unlock large-scale trade in both raw materials and value-added products.
It is also part of a plan to create a structured platform that gives African businesses easy access to regional and global markets.
According to Ba, the “marriage seems promising”, and the partners will leverage on each other’s strengths.
“We will leverage on the capabilities of CBZ in different spaces and CBZ will leverage on our financing strategy and also develop logistics,” he told NewsDay.
Ba said it was the first time ATDC was working with a local firm.
Their thrust is to have a local champion and they chose CBZ as a partner, he added.
Asked what attracted ATDC to CBZ, Ba said CBZ was a holding company and a reliable partner.
“They are in the agribusiness, which gives us the potential to grow the business with them,” Ba said.
“They are also in the financial sector, so it’s a conglomerate that has all the legs that we need in this kind of project to be successful.
“We need financing, we need people on the ground, we need expertise and CBZ came out with all the boxes that we need to tick.”
Mutizwa said the funding would be in two forms: debt and equity.
“With our partner ATDC, we want to contribute towards the stimulation of local production, value addition, foreign currency generation and provide market access for our exporters in line with government policy,” he said.
The business plan looks at tens of millions of dollars of debt and the company can grow gradually, according to Ba. He added that debt financing would be dependent on the demand in Zimbabwe and outside the country.
Ba said trading was not taking place on the continent due to lack of capital and logistic bottlenecks.
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