The African Development Bank is meeting in Ivory Coast this week to pick a new president at a time when it faces unprecedented challenges from funding cuts by the U.S. government.
Washington wants to cut $555 million in funding to the continent’s biggest multilateral lender and its African Development Fund, which offers low-priced financing to the continent’s poor nations.
Reports describe the meeting taking place this year in Abidjan, as ‘one of the biggest finance meetings on the continent’, as it assembles heads of state and finance officials to engage in progressive discussions on the requisite improvisations to be made.
It comes as heavily indebted governments in the region are searching for new sources of financing to bankroll their development projects.
AfDB, which is Africa’s largest development finance institution with $318 billion capital, is owned by 54 African states and G7 nations such as the U.S. and Japan. Its biggest shareholder is Nigeria.
The next round of replenishment for the ADF, which is held on a three-year cycle, is scheduled to take place in November. It is targeting to raise $25 billion, up from $8.9 billion in the last round.
