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A complete abelian category is cofinitary when its opposite category is a finitary abelian category. Thus a cone of epimorphisms over an inverse directed diagram induces an epimorphism from its vertex to the limit.

In a complete finitary abelian category, the comparison $j$ with diagonal matrix entries the identity and off-diagonal entries zero is monic. Express its source as the directed colimit of finite biproducts. Their maps into the product have finite-coordinate retractions and are therefore split monomorphisms; the finitary axiom applies to this cocone. If the category is also cofinitary abelian category, duality makes $j$ epic and hence invertible. For countably many copies of any object, the shift-and-fold argument in countable biproducts in an additive category force triviality then forces the identity to be zero, so every object is a zero object.