First Ever Tech-Enabled Trade Agency Launched to Promote Trade Between the UK and Africa

Africa House London, the first ever tech-enabled trade agency created to promote bilateral trade between the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa will be formally launched at an event at the House of Commons in London today.

The event will be attended by public sector officials representing both the UK and sub-Saharan Africa, along with representatives from the private sector including KPMG, BT, DLA Piper and TNT, who have already signed up as members of Africa House and are set to benefit from the full set of services offered by the new trade agency’s technology platform.

The new trade agency aims to secure long term, sustainable trade and wealth building for both the UK and Africa and is backed by a cutting-edge trading and collaboration platform. The platform, which is device-agnostic, provides technology resources and practical tools to facilitate successful trade between UK and African companies.

Africa House’s Chairman, Andrew Boff, said: “Africa House has been developed with mobile technology in mind and the platform we have developed is geared towards how Africa is doing business and communicating. Subscribers of the Africa House platform can interact freely with counter-parties and access market data through a range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets.



"Africa’s approach to business is in many ways more modern and tech enabled than the more developed markets with which it trades. Sub-Saharan Africa has a strong track record delivering banking, aid and development through mobile phones. The classic example of this is M-PESA, the mobile-phone based money transfer and micro financing service which operates in Kenya and Tanzania.”