AFC’s $150m Sukuk transaction on Nasdaq Dubai

26/02/2017 05:50 AST

Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has carried out a $150 million Islamic financing transaction on the Murabaha platform of Nasdaq Dubai, the international financial exchange serving the Middle East and Africa.

The transaction was executed to facilitate the issuance by AFC of a $150 million Sukuk, which was the first US dollar Sukuk to be issued by any multilateral African institution.

It was also the first use of Nasdaq Dubai’s fast-growing Murabaha platform by an African entity.

Following high levels of investor interest, the initial target of $100 million was more than twice oversubscribed, resulting in the transaction being upsized to $150 million and a final order book of approximately $230 million. The Sukuk is AFC’s second foray into Islamic finance; the corporation accepted a $50 million 15-year line of financing from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in 2015 to finance Islamic Finance-compliant projects located across the numerous African IDB member countries.

Banji Fehintola, Corporate Treasurer of AFC, said: “Nasdaq Dubai’s pioneering Murabaha platform greatly facilitated the issuance of our Sukuk. It supported the strong demand that we received from global as well as regional investors and enabled us to upsize the proposed issuance size to its eventual $150 million.

The platform enabled us to execute our Murabaha transactions swiftly and efficiently in a manner that was highly cost effective and provided us with Sharia’a-compliance certainty.”

The Gulf Today