INTERVIEW: Africa needs 10-fold increase in development financing to make impact – AfDB presidential candidate Sidi Tah

With Akinwunmi Adesina‘s 10-year tenure as President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) coming to an end, a new president will be elected on 29 May during the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Bank, which will be held between 26 and 30 May in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Five candidates are running for the top job. They are Sidi Tah of Mauritania, Abbas Tolli of Chad, Amadou Hott of Senegal, Samuel Maimbo of Zambia and Bajabuille Tshabalala of South Africa.

In this interview, Mr Tah speaks about his plan for the African Development Bank and how he intends to lead development financing on the continent, significantly closing the funding gap, estimated at $400 billion annually, to attain more impact.

With the Bank presently doing about $10 billion yearly, this is an ambitious outlay that seeks to kick off with about $100 billion annually. Mr Tah is confident about attaining this bold agenda, citing his decade-long experience leading the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA).

Before BADEA, Mr Tah served as Mauritania’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Development from 2008 to 2015. He also worked at the Mauritanian Bank for Development and Commerce (BMDC) from 1984 to 1986, at the Food Security Commission (1986) as a financial analyst, as the Administration and Finance Manager of the Municipality of Nouakchott in 1987, and as an Advisor to the Director General and Director of Internal Auditing Department in “Nouakchott” Port Authority. From 1999 to 2006, Mr Tah was Investment Promotion Officer, then Technical Assistant to the President of the Islamic Development Bank.

He took a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Nouakchott University, after which he earned a DEA (Master’s degree) in Economics from Paris VII University and a PhD, also in Economics, from Nice-Sophia-Antipolis University in France. He spoke to PREMIUM TIMES’ Ololade Bamidele on the sidelines of the global press conference in Nouakchott on 6 May at the offices of the Agence De Promotion Des Investissments En Mauritanie (APIM), which is the country’s investment promotion agency.

PT: How do you see your chances of getting elected as the AfDB president?

Mr Tah: I’m quite optimistic about it. With regard to my experience and my knowledge of the continent, and also the vision I have for the AfDB, I’m quite optimistic about it.

PT: Can you share your vision for the AfDB and development financing on the continent?

Mr Tah: My vision stems from a diagnosis of the main issues faced by the continent, the main challenges, but also the will to transform the continent and to accelerate the development of our countries. So, the vision is centred around four main pillars.

The first pillar is about financing, scaling up the financing. And, why scaling up the financing? Because if we look at the available financing today for the development in Africa, we have what is needed to make change happen in the continent. So, this is why I want every dollar to work, and that can be achieved through partnership, through innovative financing, optimising the balance sheet of the bank, but also developing partnership with the private sector, sovereign funds, pension funds, diaspora, and other institutional investors.

The second cardinal point of my vision is about reforming the African financial architecture. As you know, today, we have a number of financial institutions which are working in silence, and we need to bring them to work together to develop synergy and to let them work with African Development Bank more closely. And while we reshape the financial architecture of the African continent, we create more space for co-financing and introduce more coherence in the intervention of the various players. But more importantly, also to boost the development of the continent.

So, the third pillar is about our demography. As you know, Africa is the youngest continent in the world, and the population is growing at a very good and positive rate, while other continents are witnessing a decrease in their population. So by 2050, we expect that one person in four will be African, and we need to be prepared for that, and to make our human capital a source of growth to reap the benefit of the demographic dividend. And that can only be done when we prepare our youth to be able to take advantage of the growth of the economy and to have the right skills, the right education. So, we need to increase vocational training, technical training, STEMs, and to also support skills development in critical areas needed by the continent, be it in agriculture, industry, mining, or services.

The fourth cardinal point is about resilient infrastructure and value addition. We should not continue to export our raw materials. We need to process them in the continent, and to process them, we need to have enough energy at affordable cost, but also we need to develop resilient infrastructure to be able to create a conducive environment for industries to prosper.

So these are the four cardinal points of my vision. Of course, there are two cross-cutting pillars of the vision: climate change and technology.

PT: You were saying something about the financing of solutions to African problems, particularly the infrastructure challenges, and you talked about the fact that there is a huge funding gap that requires no less than about $400 billion a year to fill, and that the bank currently does about $10 billion a year in development financing, and you want to step this up about 10 times. So, how do you intend the bank to raise this huge difference between what it’s presently doing and where you intend to take it?

Mr Tah: It will be done through co-financing with our partners, developing partnerships with global financial institutions (GFIs) in Africa, but also in the Global North and in the Middle East. We need also to increase our partnership with sovereign funds, with pension funds, and to raise more capital from the capital markets. So, we need to tap also the domestic capital market in Africa, to work with regulators in Africa to deepen the capital market in Africa, and to increase resource mobilisation from domestic sources, but also from our partners worldwide.

So, as you know, Africa doesn’t trade enough with itself, i.e. between African countries. You have so many instances of African countries importing products that neighbouring countries can provide them; importing from far-flung countries, and that comes at a huge cost to them in terms of even growth and development, and inflation rates in those countries. The African Continental Free Trade Agreement was supposed to address part of that, but it hasn’t really worked.

PT: The challenge is well known. So what role do you think the AfDB can play in ensuring that there’s more intra-African trading?

Mr Tah: I believe that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement can only be implemented if all the players work together. So, the African Development Bank should take the lead to bring all the partners on board, and particularly to work on all fronts.

So, we have the infrastructure, because one of the impediments that is hampering the development of cross-border trade within Africa is the lack of adequate infrastructure. So, we need to increase our investment in infrastructure.

Second, we need to remove all the non-tariff barriers in the continent, and that requires the African Development Bank to work very closely with governments, but also with regional economic communities, because they already have experience in this area.

We also have the payment system. The African Development Bank should work very closely with the African Bank, which has developed the Pan-African Payment System (PAPS). And, we need to also work more closely with the private sector to encourage the development of regional infrastructure projects, which should be a massive volume of investment.

We need to also increase the involvement of Africa 50, which is one of the African Development Bank, to develop more cross-border centres. There is a very positive experience already launched by Africa 50, and we need to have it at a large scale in all African countries, to speed up the process of transit from one country to another. And that can really reduce the cost and reduce the time.

So, we need to have a holistic approach for the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Treaty Agreement, and I think the African Development Bank should be the main player, bringing all the other players together to work with the Secretariat of the AfCFTA to make the Continental Treaty Agreement a reality.

PT: So, another thing is, if you do emerge as the president of the AfDB, it will be happening at a time of a lot of instability, especially on the back of what’s happening in the US. The US is the second largest shareholder of the AfDB, and when I looked at the 2026 budget proposal, President Donald Trump has cut about $555 million from the AfDB funding. So, that’s a problem, right? I would like to get your thoughts on what you would do to ensure that, to more or less shield the AfDB from this sort of global turbulence.

Mr Tah: I think in the short term that cut may be painful, but I do believe that we are at a time when we need to redefine our partnerships, the basis of our partnerships with our partners in the Global North. And, I do believe that the increase in the allocation of IDC, which is the specialised institution in the USA to fund the private sector, is a good indication of the promising partnership Africa can develop with the United States to increase Foreign Direct Investment and US Direct Investment in Africa, but also to boost the development of private-owned and private-managed infrastructure in Africa. So, we are on the eve of a new type of partnership, and I do believe that that partnership can be very promising for the continent.

PT: You’ve spoken about an ambitious strategy of deepening the “Hi Fives”, which is part of what you want to work with on the ground, with a new framework that focuses on enhancing access to capital, consolidating the continent’s financial systems, harnessing the demographic dividend and building climate-resilient infrastructure. How do you intend to practicalise this?

Mr Tah: So, first of all, I do believe that the bank will need to have a large consultation with all the stakeholders. In my first 100 days, I am planning to have a very large consultation and brainstorming with all the stakeholders, all our partners, to look at ways and means to speed up the process of implementing the vision, and also which role each party can play. So, I do believe that the bank should work with all its partners and with all the stakeholders to have the vision implemented.

And that really needs a lot of coordination and a lot of consultation, and this is my priority as the head of the African Development Fund. Okay, I’m very interested in the whole issue around the demographic dividend.

PT: How do you conceive of the structural transformation that will generate millions of jobs to harness this dividend?

Mr Tah: So, when we focus on the beneficiation of our minerals, when we focus on the processing of our agricultural products, when we focus on supporting our small and medium enterprises, we can develop our value chain and create jobs for our youth. So, I’m confident that this is something we can do and something we will do.

PT: From a funding base of $94 billion in 2014 to $318 billion in 2024 for the AfDB, how do you intend to triple the funding capacity of the bank?

Mr Tah: My objective is to make each dollar work like $10. And as I mentioned, I will bring all the partners, all the Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) in the Global North, not only the DFIs in the Middle East and the Arab Coordination Group, but also we’ll work with all the sovereign funds, the pension funds. We’ll tap also the investment of the African diaspora, and we’ll work on deepening the capital market across Africa also.

PT: As President of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), you grew total assets by 75 per cent during your 10-year tenure. You also reduced the bank’s non-performing loans from 11 per cent to 0.5 per cent. How exactly did you do that?

Mr Tah: In fact, three major factors helped me to achieve what I have achieved. First was the team. A president cannot do everything or anything if he doesn’t have a good team. So, the major factor of success for BADEA was the team. And, I believe that at the African Development Bank, I will retain the best talent and will also attract the best talent from the continent and outside the continent. So, I will focus on the team.

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The second success factor is the support from shareholders. The African Development Bank has 81 shareholders. At the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, we developed great confidence between the bank and its shareholders through a transparent relationship. And that helped us to get the full support of the shareholders, which was translated in a capital increase of 376 per cent, in a time when resources were very scarce.

The third factor is developing partnerships across the world, because every partnership brings additional resources, expertise, and access. So, developing partnerships around the world will definitely bring a lot of resources for the bank and enable it to achieve its mandate.

PT: What reforms are you considering to make the bank more efficient?

Mr Tah: One of the first steps I intend to take is business process engineering. To look at the processes and to cut the cumbersome, unnecessary steps in any process, and to try to make the bank more agile, more efficient, and also to speed up the process of approval, the process of dispersing, and the process of project implementation. Because it is unacceptable that you define your needs in one year and then deliver (results) 10 years later. Then the conditions would have dramatically changed in the country (of target), which reduces the impact of your project.

So, we need to cut all the unnecessary steps, to do a business process engineering, and accelerate project implementation.

PT: During the press conference, someone asked how you intend to balance infrastructure development with sustainable borrowing. Please elaborate a bit more on this.

Mr Tah: That can be done only by bringing on board the private sector in a massive way. Because when you develop the public-private partnership, so basically the government is not borrowing and the infrastructure will be privately funded.

So, we need to develop more PPPs, we need to bring the private sector to build and manage our infrastructure to make the continent bridge the infrastructure gap, but also to maintain the debt level of the countries or to reduce it.

PT: You spoke about realising 10 priorities within 10 weeks. Can you give us an idea about this?

Mr Tah: So definitely, as I mentioned, the first 100 days will be very intense in terms of consultations, in terms of gathering all the partners of the bank, and also working on how to speed up the implementation of the vision. So, I would rely on a very high-calibre team to help me to transform my vision into actions to contribute to the improvement of the lives and livelihoods of our population.

PT: Well, I can see that from the way the Minister of Economy and Finance of Mauritania, Sid’Ahmed Bouh, spoke, there’s been a lot of shuttle diplomacy around your candidacy. Still, do you think you stand a chance against South Africa’s Bajabulile Tshabalala, whose candiacy appears to be pushed forcefully by her president?

Mr Tah: I have full respect for all the candidates. Most of them are friends and I have a lot of respect for them. But I do believe that given my experience as the head of a very similar institution and given also my network and my deep knowledge of the continent, I stand ready to be the best candidate to lead the African Development Bank.

PT: Thank you so very much for this opportunity to speak to you.

Mr Tah: Thank you.