LAGOS, Nigeria, April 16, 2020/ -- By Lewis Chukwuma
The
African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is Africa’s premier development
finance institution. It comprises three distinct entities: the African
Development Bank (AfDB), the African Development Fund (ADF) and the
Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF). On the ground in 37 African countries with an
external office in Japan, the AfDB contributes to the economic
development and the social
progress of its 54 regional member states.
Currently,
at the helm of this continental behemoth’s affairs is Dr. Akinwumi
Adesina, renowned development economist and a former minister of
agriculture in Nigeria and is the eighth elected President of the
African Development Bank Group.
He was elected for his first term
as president of the development finance institution on May 28, 2015, by
the Bank’s Board of Governors at its Annual Meetings in Abidjan, Côte
d’Ivoire. The first Nigerian to occupy that position, he has announced
his intentions to pursue a second term in office at the bank’s annual
meeting in Equatorial Guinea.
Significantly, his proposed
candidacy for second tenure as AfDB president has drawn the firm
endorsements of President Muhammadu Buhari, the African Union (AU) and
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Perhaps, this
may not be surprising because Adesina has demonstrated with his life’s
trajectory that development economics fundamentally addresses
transformation of the human condition for good.
While the ECOWAS
decision backing Adesina’s second tenure was announced at the end of the
56th ordinary session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government
of ECOWAS, held recently in Abuja, Nigeria, the Executive Council of AU
proclaimed its support during the 36th Ordinary Session of the AU
Executive Council, held during the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
6-7 February 2020. The African Union Executive Council comprises 55
ministers of foreign affairs representing the member states of the
African Union.
According to the ECOWAS, “In recognition of the
sterling performance of Dr. Akinwumi Adesina during his first term of
office as President of the African Development Bank, the Authority
endorses his candidacy for a second term as the President of the bank,”
ECOWAS said in a communique issued after the meeting.
The ECOWAS
summit included a progress report on the region’s economic performance.
It noted the role of the African Development Bank in the continent’s
transformation and called for greater cooperation in order to fund
projects in West Africa.
“The Authority takes note of the
region’s improved economic performance, with ECOWAS real GDP growing by
3.3% in 2019 against 3.0% in 2018, in a context characterised by a
decline in inflationary pressures and sound public finances,” the
regional body further said in a statement.
More, the Authority
commended efforts made on currency and monetary policy convergence in
ECOWAS and laid out plans to advance the movement. These efforts are a
key part of the regional integration agenda championed by the African
Development Bank, as exemplified by the African Continental Free Trade
Area, which aims to become the world’s largest free trade zone.
Meanwhile,
as COVID-19, the viral global pandemic sweeps the globe, Sub-Sahara
African region is no exemption to the economic shock. It’s worth noting
that in its analysis, Renaissance Capital revised down the growth
forecast for Sub-Sahara Africa from 3.5 percent to 1.3percent.
A
proactive AfDB Group, under Adesina’s adroit leadership has also risen
to the challenge and has announced a $10 billion facility support for
African countries. In no small way, this has helped scale up a $3
billion COVID-19 social bond on the London Stock Exchange to help Africa
deal with the economic and financial fallouts of the pandemic. Industry
observers have commended AfDB president, Adesina, who under his
leadership has made this support a reality.
Adesina has served in
a number of high-profile positions internationally, including with the
Rockefeller Foundation, and was Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and
Rural Development from 2011 to 2015, a career stint that was widely
praised for his reforms in the agricultural sector. The former minister
brought the same drive to the Bank, making agriculture one of the
organization’s priority areas. In 2017, he was awarded the World Food
Prize.
The World Food Prize Foundation lauded Adesina’s
qualitative leadership and his visionary roles over the past two decades
in promoting Agriculture with the Rockefeller Foundation and the
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
During his
tenure, the bank has seen its fortunes rise on several fronts, including
the largest general capital increase in its history with a capital base
of $208 billion dollars. In the 2018, Aid Transparency Index Report,
released by ‘Publish What You Fund’, the African Development Bank was
ranked 4th among 45 development organisations around the world.
In
Johannesburg in 2018, the bank launched the Africa Investment Forum, a
fully transactional platform, to attract investment into Africa, with
participation from private sector investors, pension and sovereign
wealth funds, Heads of State and government officials to discuss
specific investment deals. The Africa Investment Forum was an
outstanding success by all measures. The forum delivered an impressive
US$38.7 billion in investment interests, all done in less than 72 hours!
However,
an apparently contrived crisis is stewing at the Bank. The AfDB
president’s unopposed second term nomination doesn’t appear to sit well
with some non-African shareholders, one of which was strongly opposed
during his first term election. Recently, there had been some strong
Board resistance by a number of non-regional member countries who were
opposed to the COVID-19 support facilities and the lifting of partial
sanctions for countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.
Besides the
dispute over the pandemic support fund, there is complaint by some
members of the AfDB staff against Adesina’s running of the bank. These
allegations which were looked into confidentially by the Bank’s Ethics
Committee, have been circulated widely and against Bank rules by a
certain non-regional Executive Director who it is reported has never
hidden his opposition to Adesina.
Among several allegations are
that Adesina intends to ‘Nigerianise’ the AfDB by giving compatriots key
positions and granting lines of credit to leading Nigerian companies
with ease.”
Facts on the bank’s website contradict this as an
approved list of projects show that Senegal, Cameroun, Tanzania, Rwanda,
Namibia and others are key beneficiaries of about 75 projects worth
$64.5bn. These countries have projects specifically targeting them,
while Nigeria benefits more from multiple-country focused projects.
The
publication of the allegations in a prominent French newspaper is
providing credence to the perspective that this is a concerted effort by
some forces to undermine Adesina’s credibility and thwart his deserved
re-election. Interestingly, about a month ago, on March 13, a break-away
group from the rank of petitioners filed a complaint against a key
non-African Executive Director for allegedly misleading and manipulating
the members of the group against Adesina.
Throwing more light on
the botched plot to derail Adesina’s reelection, a staff group
clarified their position: “We were members of the group called ‘Group of
Concerned Staff Members’ until we understood that we were being
manipulated by a group of non-regional Executive Directors, not for the
good governance of the African Development Bank but to discredit the
candidacy of the current President for his re-election.”
They
further expressed outrage at the actions of an elected staff member, the
Executive Director, who uses a group called ‘Group of Concerned Staff
Members’ to take the AfDB hostage.
More, the breakaway group
contended there are serious and repeated breaches of the Code of Conduct
by the said Executive Director. The fact that the said Executive
Director had breached the confidentiality requirements of the rules and
regulations of the Ethics Committee, by providing “exhaustive reports of
all discussions (during meetings or by email) between members of the
Ethics Committee,” was damning.
Adesina, in a formal response to
the allegations, insisted that: “The African Development Bank has a very
high reputation for good governance”, adding that he has confidence in
the Board of Governors of the Bank and pleaded that the Ethics Committee
should be allowed to do its job without interference.
It is
beyond doubt that Adesina will certainly have his day to defend himself.
The emerging consensus is that on every single allegation, he is
confident that he will be vindicated.
According to Henry Louis
Gates, former leader of the African and American Research Institute at
Harvard University, “People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when
their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody to hate. They look for
somebody to blame. And a real leader speaks to anxiety and to fear and
allays those fears, assuages anxiety.”
Within the limitations of
the continent’s extant peculiar political and economic milieu, in his
five years in office and counting, Dr. Adesina has spoken to continental
anxiety and to national fears and allayed those fears as well as
assuaged the anxiety. This is his forte.
*Chukwuma is a public issues analyst
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