As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to impact Africa, scammers have seized the opportunity to prey on the greatly impacted small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

African Guarantee Fund – for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Ltd (“AGF”) has received reports of scam emails offering loans to SMEs, upon receipt of a mandatory AGF Certificate. The said certificate is apparently issued at a cost of about USD 230.

The email scammers are impersonating development organisations and obtaining identification cards, passport photos, bank statements, Credit Reference Bureau reports, business plans and other documents which is likely to be a phishing attempt to get banking or other personal information from its victims. 

During this unprecedented period, AGF would like to warn SMEs about criminals seeking to take advantage of the pandemic in order to obtain money or sensitive personal information. We urge everyone to be wary of emails and any other communication that purport to be from AGF or in partnership with AGF, asking for your information or for money.

The domain currently being used by the scammers is africaguarantefund.com and not africanguaranteefund.com which is our legitimate domain. The said company offering the certificate is also termed as Africa Guarantee Fund which closely mimics our company name – African Guarantee Fund. 

All our official communication is published on our website and we wish to implore the public to always verify all communication by visiting our website. https://africanguaranteefund.com/news-coverage/

AGF is working with authorities to identify and curb these scammers. For those who have unfortunately fallen victim of this coronavirus scam, please contact law enforcement immediately.

You can reach us on email via info@agf.africa as well as through our official social media accounts linked to our website.