Adesina, AfDB President Marks first Year in Office with Remarkable Transformation Agenda

During his investiture as the 8th elected President of the African Development Bank Group on 1st September 2015, Akinwumi Adesina pledged “to help build a new Africa with prosperous, sustainable and inclusive growth; one that is peaceful, secure and united, regionally integrated and globally competitive.” The ultimate goal: to remake Africa in a decade.

Participants at the ceremony were excited with the well-articulated optimism from the new President. Some feared the targets were too high to be attained.

However, one year on, those goals now appear within reach as the Bank rolls out strategies, forges partnerships and mobilises resources to make the pledges a reality.

People are beginning to pay attention. Last May at the Bank’s Annual Meetings in Lusaka, Governors representing the 80 member-countries of the Bank Group agreed that the institution’s work programmes were on track to achieve the inaugural promise.

The facts on the ground speak for themselves – the new administration has scaled up the Bank’s operations to unprecedented levels while developing a ten-year transformation agenda designed to resolve five critical existential challenges, which the continent has grappled with over the years.

For instance, loan and grant approvals shot up to a new annual high of US $9 billion at the end of 2015; with projections that the amount would rise by 20% to US $11 billion by the end of 2016. Actual disbursement is programmed to reach US $6.6 billion, with one third of the amount already disbursed.

This represents a giant step compared with the US $4.55 billion realised in 2015 and 4.14 billion in 2014. It is worth noting that actual disbursements rates against targets had been falling steadily from 98% in 2012 to 81.9% in 2015, largely due to disbursement delays which have now been reduced substantially.

The mobilisation of jumbo loans amounting to nearly US $2 billion through syndication to South Africa’s energy utility (Eskom); Morocco’s Ouarzazate solar complex, which is considered to be the largest in Africa; and for the extension of Ethiopia’s growing energy industry under the Bank’s New Deal on Energy for Africa in a couple of months clearly signposted its high ambition and its future directions. “We should never have a low ambition for Africa,” says Adesina.

When vast areas of Eastern and Southern Africa were hit by a devastating drought, the Bank immediately packaged US $549 million in financing to help the countries concerned to deal with the situation and reduce their vulnerability to the hazards.