(Business in Cameroon) – Pan-African banking group Ecobank is stepping up its push to support intra-African trade. The bank says it has connected 1,200 small and medium-sized enterprises in Cameroon and listed around 100 local products on its digital Single Market Trade Hub platform.
The announcement was made on December 11, 2025, in Douala during a press briefing marking Ecobank’s Bank of the Year 2025 award in Cameroon. The prize was awarded for the second consecutive year by British magazine The Banker.
Launched in 2023, Single Market Trade Hub links buyers and sellers of goods and services across Africa. A Cameroonian SME producing footwear, for example, can register on the platform, gain visibility with a buyer in Kenya, and complete the transaction through the same digital channel. The platform is designed to secure transactions and help businesses expand beyond national borders by offering a single entry point to African markets.
Rapid growth in Cameroon and across Africa
According to Ecobank, the number of registered users in Cameroon has increased fivefold in one year, rising from 219 in 2024 to 1,200 currently. At the continental level, the group says Single Market Trade Hub now connects 12,000 companies and 1,300 products.
Gwendoline Abunaw, managing director of Ecobank Cameroon and head of the CEMAC cluster, describes the platform as a “game changer” for African economic integration.
This expansion comes at a time when weak infrastructure and limited integration of intra-African payment systems remain major barriers to trade between African countries. In this fragmented environment, Single Market Trade Hub positions itself as a tool to streamline cross-border trade by offering SMEs a more secure and standardized framework for transactions.
Intra-African trade rebounds but remains limited
According to Afreximbank’s African Trade Report 2024, intra-African trade rebounded last year to reach $220 billion, up 12.5% from 2023. This is equivalent to about CFA124,000 billion, based on an indicative exchange rate of around CFA560 to the dollar.
Over the same period, total African merchandise trade grew by 13.9% to $1.5 trillion, or close to CFA840,000 billion, reversing the 5.4% contraction recorded the previous year.
Despite this recovery, Africa still accounts for only 3.3% of global exports. Technological tools such as Single Market Trade Hub represent only part of the solution. For these platforms to reach their full potential, banks, governments, and regulators will also need to ease regulatory rigidities and address structural constraints weighing on trade flows, in order to create a more supportive environment for cross-border commerce.
Frédéric Nonos
