IFC plans $10 million loan to Idrissa Nassa's Coris Bank in Chad to expand SME lending

The International Finance Corporation plans to provide up to $10 million in financing to Coris Bank International Chad, the local subsidiary of Burkinabe billionaire Idrissa Nassa's Coris Holding, to expand lending to small and medium-sized enterprises across one of the Sahel's most underbanked economies.

The operation will take the form of a five-year senior loan, according to an information note published by the IFC on May 22. The package will include $5 million financed directly by the IFC, alongside a syndicated loan mobilised from other financial partners. The targeted sectors include trade, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, forestry and fishing.

Under the proposed structure, at least 15 percent of the financing must be channelled toward women-led or women-owned businesses, reflecting the IFC's standard gender inclusion requirements in Sahel-region SME lending facilities.

Coris Bank International Chad was established following Coris Holding's acquisition of Société Générale's Chad operations in 2024, giving Nassa's group its most recent geographic expansion in the Sahel zone. The acquisition added Chad to a network that now spans Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Senegal, Benin, Niger, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Côte d'Ivoire, making Coris one of the most geographically distributed banking groups in Francophone West and Central Africa.

The proposed IFC loan has not yet received board approval, which is the next procedural step before the transaction can be finalised.

Nassa founded Coris Bank International in Burkina Faso in 2008 and has expanded it steadily over 17 years into the third-largest banking group in the UEMOA zone by assets. His group's ongoing discussions with the IFC about Coris's Cabo Verde acquisition, a proposed 59.81 percent stake in Banco Comercial do Atlântico involving up to $100 million in IFC financing, represent the largest single transaction in Coris's history if completed.

The Chad SME facility is smaller in scale but significant in context: Chad consistently ranks among the lowest in the world for formal banking penetration, with the majority of small businesses operating entirely outside the formal credit system. A five-year facility targeting the construction, trade and agriculture sectors directly addresses the financing gap in an economy that remains heavily dependent on oil revenue, subsistence agriculture and cross-border trade.