South African bank Standard Bank is proposing to create a continental business platform, like the African Economic Forum to facilitate intra-African and cross border business opportunities in 2017. The platform will also have a transregional digital portal. The bank, which operates in 17 countries across the continent, wants to provide customers and non-customers alike with credible information and dispel the misconceptions of doing business in Africa. The bank had hosted transregional conferences in East and West Africa recently to help get entrepreneurs on the ground and give them a sense of the operating environment in the rest of Africa. Some 25 South African businesses participated in the conferences, with more and more enquiring about opportunities across the continent.
