Africa: ADB Group Annual Meetings in Abuja: Election of President On the Agenda

4 March 2005
African Development Bank (Abidjan)
press release

Tunis — The Board of Governors of the African Development Bank (ADB) Group will meet in Abuja on 18 and 19 May for the Annual Meetings of the Bank.

A major item on the agenda of the 40th Annual Meetings of the Bank and the 31st Meetings of the African Development Fund (ADF) will be the election of the 8th President of the Bank Group for a five-year mandate.

The elected President will replace Mr. Omar Kabbaj who has led the institution for ten years.

Seven candidates are running for the position. These include Messrs. Kingsley Y. Amoako (Ghana), sponsored by Zambia, Ethiopia and Uganda; Ismael Hassan (Egypt), sponsored by Djibouti; Donald Kaberuka (Rwanda), sponsored by Kenya and Seychelles; Simba Makoni (Zimbabwe), sponsored by South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Lesotho, Malawi and Mauritius; Theodore Nkodo (Cameroon), sponsored by Burundi; Olabisi Ogunjobi (Nigeria), sponsored by Senegal, Benin, The Gambia, Sierra Leone and Mauritania; and Casimir Oye-Mba (Gabon), sponsored by Morocco, Burkina Faso, Congo, Angola, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde.

The Annual Meetings will be preceded by the Bank Group's financial presentation on Monday, 16 May, and a joint symposium with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on the theme: "Capacity Development for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Africa".

Several workshops are also organized by various departments of the Bank in the fringes of the Annual Meetings. The themes of these workshops are: "Creating the Proper Environment for Effective Partnerships for Progress of NEPAD" (Sunday, 15 May), "Pension Reforms and Capital Markets" (Monday, 16 May), "Financing Small and Medium Enterprises in Africa" (Monday, 16 May), "Perception of Capital Markets of the African Economies" (Monday, 16 May), "Scaling up Poverty Reduction in Africa: Shangai Follow-up Learning Event" (Monday, 16 May), "Financing Africa's Development Through Local Capital Markets" (Tuesday, 17 May).

This will be followed by the launch of African Economic Outlook, an ADB/OECD annual report on Tuesday, 17 May.

The ADB Group, which comprises the African Development Bank, the African Development Fund (ADF) and the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF), was established in 1964 to mobilise resources to finance the economic development and social progress of African countries. Its share holders are made up of 53 African countries (regional member countries) and 24 non-African (non regional member countries).

The Bank's authorized capital currently stands at 21.87 billion Units of Account (about 33 billion USD). Between 1967 and 2004, the Bank has approved a total of 3,007 loans and grants amounting to 34 billion UA (about 53 billion USD).

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