ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development

The ECOWAS Fund was established in 1975 at the same time as the erstwhile Executive Secretariat of the Economic Community of West African States (which would become the ECOWAS Commission) and commenced operations in 1979.

EBID started operations in 1999 as a holding company with two specialised subsidiaries:

• ECOWAS Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for financing the public sector; and
• ECOWAS Regional Investment Bank (ERIB) for financing the private sector.

In 2006, the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government agreed to reorganise the EBID Group into one unified entity with two windows: one for promoting the private sector and the other, for developing the public sector in order to extend the services of the Bank to a wider range of stakeholders involved in sustainable economic development activities and programmes at national and regional levels. The Bank has been operating under this structure since January 2007. The headquarters of the Bank is in Lomé, Togolese Republic.

The mission of EBID is to contribute towards creating the conditions capable of enhancing the emergence of an economically strong, industrialised and prosperous West Africa that is perfectly integrated both internally, and in the global economic system in order to benefit from and take advantage of the opportunities and prospects offered by globalisation.^[3]

By virtue of its Articles of Association the Bank aims to:

• Contribute to attaining the objectives of the Community by supporting infrastructure projects relating to regional integration or any other development projects in the public and private sectors; and
• Assist in the development of the Community by funding special programmes.

EBID financial and technical assistance is open to the following entities:

• ECOWAS Member States or their agencies;
• Public companies, private companies and mixed enterprise corporations of ECOWAS Member States;
• Local financial institutions;
• Corporate bodies from ECOWAS Member States or from foreign countries desirous of investing in the ECOWAS zone, in sectors within EBID’s areas of intervention.

The EBID decision-making bodies are:

• Board of Governors
• Board of Director
• President

The Board of Governors is the highest decision-making body and has oversight functions over the Bank’s management and administration. The Board of Directors is responsible for general operations of the Bank. The President is responsible for the day-to-day management of EBID and his powers are defined in the Bank's Articles of Association. The President is assisted by two Vice-Presidents namely, the Vice-President of Finance and Corporate Services and the Vice-President of Operations.

Operational activities of EBID are intended to lay the foundation for the sustainable development of Member States of the Community through the financing of regional and national (public and private) projects. The Bank operates primarily in the following areas:

• Energy
• Transport
• Health
• Water
• Finance
• Agriculture
• Education
• Industry^[4]

EBID intervenes in the form of:

• Long, Medium and Short-Term Loans^{[5][6][7][8][9]}
• Equity Participation
• Granting of Lines of Credit and Putting in Place Framework Agreements for Refinancing
• Issue and Guarantee of Loans, Debentures, Bonds and Other Securities
• Financial Engineering Operations and Services