ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development
The ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) is a leading regional investment and development bank, owned by the fifteen Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Member States namely, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. EBID is committed to financing developmental projects and programmes covering diverse initiatives from infrastructure and basic amenities, rural development and environment, industry, and social services sectors, through its private and public sector windows. EBID intervenes through long, medium, and short-term loans, equity participation, lines of credit, refinancing, financial engineering operations, and related services. EBID emerged as a banking group (the EBID Group) after the transformation of the erstwhile Fund for Cooperation, Compensation and Development of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Fund) in 1999. The ECOWAS Fund was established in 1975 at the same time as the erstwhile Executive Secretariat of the Economic Community of West African States (the present 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