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The man known as Africa’s “optimist-in-chief” faces one of his toughest challenges this year: handing over the reins of his beloved institution to his successor. After 10 years at the top of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina will this week see a new president elected at the bank’s annual meeting in Ivory Coast before a handover in September.
Adesina will be passing on a bank that has grown dramatically during his tenure. “In 2015, the capital of the bank was $93bn. Today, the African Development Bank is $318bn.”
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the 65-year-old Nigerian was characteristically upbeat about the continent’s future but realistic about the challenges, many of which, he says, stem from injustice in the way African countries are treated.
“In terms of the taxes and royalties that Africa should be getting from its vast natural resources. Africa has oil, gas, minerals, metals; we have forest, we have everything. But we are not getting anything from it because international corporations and national corporations don’t pay the relevant taxes and royalties. So we need to make sure that is done.
“We must have impatience with underdevelopment,” he says.
The AfDB has been gaining prestige, ranked as the world’s best multilateral financial institution in 2021 by Global Finance and feted for its transparency in last year’s aid transparency index. Set up in 1964, it is a specialised financial institution focused on promoting economic and social progress, unlike a profit-driven commercial bank.
“Whoever is taking over, they are certainly getting a walk-on global institution,” Adesina says. “But it’s not a job – it’s a mission. You have to breathe it. And Africa is watching.”
“Multilateral financial institutions like ourselves were not set up to do Mickey Mouse stuff, little marginal stuff; no, we were set up to address global challenges.
“Without infrastructure there is no trade. And so the bank, in the last 10 years, invested more than $55bn in infrastructure.
“Scale matters. Impact matters. Delivery matters. But most importantly, you cannot get to where you could not envision – vision drives.”
The aid budget cuts from the US, the UK and others are less of a concern to Adesina than the lack of fairness in how the world’s economic powers and risk assessors treat African countries.
“If African countries were rated properly, equitably,” he says, “they would be paying $75bn less every year in terms of servicing their debts.
“The president of Kenya, William Ruto, he told me something. He said when there was a military coup in Niger, he got information that Kenya had to pay an increased interest rate on their bonds – because there was a coup in Niger.
“He said he told the person: ‘Well look, this is the map of Kenya. Where is Niger: inside it, or out or next to it?’
“Aid has helped countries that needed it, that are vulnerable. It has been good. There’s no doubt about that,” Adesina says. “But aid cannot be part of my balance sheet.
“Benevolence is good; what benevolence is not is an asset class. But the future of Africa is going to come from investment, not aid. I don’t want freebies – I want Africa to develop with pride.”
But Adesina remains resolutely positive. “I will always be optimistic about the future of Africa. God did not make a mistake when he made me an African. And I will ask God for permission to resurrect as an African.
“My heart, my soul, my mind, is in advancing my continent’s development. If you look at the opportunities that we have, we have not even scratched it.
“We have the largest population of youth in the world today,” he notes. “One out of four people in the world are going to be African by 2050.
Africa will be the workshop of the world, brimming with talents, with opportunities for its young people.
“You look at the size of our digital economy today. It’s roughly $180bn. But its going to go to $712bn by 2050. You have Africa urbanising more rapidly than any other region of the world.
“What Africa does with agriculture will determine the future of food in the world. So why will I not be optimistic? That is the place to be. The question to ask is why are you not in Africa? If you are not in Africa, I wonder where you are.”
Adesina hits out at the stereotype that investing in Africa is high risk. “Really? Is Africa that risky compared to others? No, the data doesn’t support that.
“Bloomberg, and Moody’s Analytics did an assessment over 14 years: loss rates in Africa on industry investment, 1.9%. The case for North America, 6.6%. Latin America was 10%. For eastern Europe, over 12.2%. In western Asia, 4.6%. Western Europe, 4.6%.
“Africa has the lowest,” he emphasises. “So the issue is understand Africa. We are there to support investors on this continent. And I know that Africa is the biggest greenfield investment frontier in the world.
“When I came to the bank, I told myself, ‘this is the African Development Bank – the most important part is the development part.’ And so my focus was how do we accelerate development?
“That was how I simplified it in a clear way into the ‘high fives’ of the bank: to light up and power Africa – electricity for everybody. To feed Africa. To industrialise, to integrate Africa and to improve the quality of life of the people – that means water, sanitation, education, skills, jobs. If Africa achieved these high fives, we would have achieved 90% of the UN sustainable development goals.”
Adesina and Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank, last year launched Mission 300, a private-public collaboration to connect an additional 300 million sub-Saharan Africans – half of the 600 million living without electricity – to grids by 2030. Although proud of the big projects under way, including Africa’s largest wind-power scheme in Lake Turkana, Kenya, he says there is more to be done in the energy sector.
“I’m excited about the level of political commitment I’m seeing from the heads of state,” he says.
“Today, you have 10 out of the 20 fastest-growing economies in the world in Africa. So, it’s a pluralism of excitement about the future prospects and resilience of Africa. It’s not about emotion. It’s about the reality and the world cannot ignore Africa.
“I’m fully confident that the stone that the builders rejected, will soon become one day the head cornerstone.”
For the new president, he also wishes much energy. “My time ends 1 September,” he smiles. “There will be a note that I will leave to my successor, some ideas.”
