Power, debt and self-reliance: Five contenders vie to reshape African Development Bank’s future

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - The headquarters of the African Development Bank (AfDB) is pictured in Abidjan, Ivory Coast January 30, 2020. — Reuters pic

LONDON, May 26 — Five candidates are running to become President of the African Development Bank in an election on Thursday during the lender’s annual meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Tectonic shifts in global development finance — with shrinking concessional funding, cuts to wealthy countries’ aid spending and whipsawing borrowing costs — have made the bank’s US$318 billion capital more crucial to Africa’s development.

Who are they and what do they want to do?

Swazi Tshabalala Bajabulile

A banker with 30 years of experience, Tshabalala was, until October, AfDB’s senior vice president.

The South African, and sole female candidate, plans to transform the bank if she takes the helm.

“The internal structure of the institution ... doesn’t facilitate the right sort of sustained focus to be able to really deliver effectively on things like infrastructure,” she said. “We really should consolidate that.”

Tshabalala said if delivered properly, infrastructure would allow Africa to tap its resources — from minerals to finance to trade. She wants to create innovative financial instruments, building on the AfDB’s foray into hybrid capital.

Amadou Hott

Senegal’s former economy minister has decades of banking experience from Lagos to London.

He would focus the AfDB on African financial self-reliance by mobilising resources and designing projects to keep private money on the continent.

“Revenue mobilisation is number one,” he said.

Hott said revenue collection must rise — the average tax to GDP ratio in Africa is 16 per cent, versus the OECD average of 34 per cent — which could boost credit ratings, lower borrowing costs and marshal money for pressing needs, including power and infrastructure.

“The money is out there,” he said, adding that a lack of ready-made well-structured projects that mitigated risks and delivered returns had hamstrung private sector mobilisation.

Samuel Munzele Maimbo

A current World Bank vice president, the Zambian has three decades of development finance experience.

As president, he would launch behind-the-scenes work to aggregate data, fix the financial plumbing and streamline regulations to enable Africa’s 54 nations to trade with — and finance — each other.

“Now more than ever before, we’ve got to get trade working on the continent,” he said. “If we’re only trading 15 per cent of our products amongst each other, our products are either rotting or they’re being undervalued.”

Maimbo — who has the backing of the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa — wants a continent-wide approach to everything from debt sustainability to revenue collection and infrastructure.

Sidi Ould Tah

Mauritania’s ex-finance minister and presidential adviser has run the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa for the past decade.

“The AfDB must break free from legacy constraints and position itself as the driver of Africa’s economic sovereignty,” Tah said.

He is focused on four points: mobilising a broader scope of capital, reforming financial systems, harnessing demographics by formalising the “informal sector” that employs 83 per cent of Africans and building climate-resilient infrastructure.

By partnering with the private sector, other multilateral institutions and regional development banks, the AfDB can turn every US$1 raised into US$10 of productive capital, he said.

Abbas Mahamat Tolli

Tolli has held top financial positions across Central Africa, including as Chad’s finance minister, regional central bank governor and president of the Development Bank of Central African States.

He focuses on self-sufficiency — from agriculture to finance — and wants to strengthen governance to cut inefficient, untransparent spending that has mired countries in debt without development.

Africa suffers a lot of financial outflows due to fiscal evasion or mismanagement of resources, he said, adding “we need to better manage.”

To make it work, Tolli envisions a “major overhaul” of the AfDB’s operational model by pooling risk, strengthening public-private partnerships and digitising financing mechanisms.

Tolli said his own life — tending goats as a child after fleeing civil war aged six — mirrored Africa’s journey and gave him unique insight into how to lift all those on the continent. — Reuters