The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Friday launched the premier edition of its Annual Development Effectiveness Review (ADER), on the sidelines of its Annual Meetings in Lisbon, Portugal.
The first ever comprehensive report on the Bank´s performance, the ADR reviews development trends across the continent and tracks how Bank operations have contributed to Africa´s development results over the last year.
Presenting the Report, the Quality Results Assurance Director, Thomas Hurley, described it as a results management framework which looks at:
What development progress is Africa making?
How well is AfDB contributing to Africa's development?
How effective are AfDB´s operations
How well is AfDB managing itself to better support Africa's development?
The 46-page publication argues that Africa is at a turning point. With a collective GDP of $1.6 trillion--on a par with Russia or Brazil--the continent is poised for economic take-off. From the late 1990s, and until the global financial crisis, Africa enjoyed unprecedented economic growth, a growth that created exciting new opportunities for the private sector.
Africa now has a growing middle class with money to spend, and the consumer goods, telecoms and banking sectors on the continent are expanding two to three times faster than in industrialised countries. In 2010, household spending in each of Africa's five largest consumer markets Alexandria, Cairo, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Lagos--was expected to surpass $25 billion a year, putting these markets on par with Mumbai or New Delhi.
This new economic frontier creates new and special challenges for the AfDB. The 2011 ADER provides strong evidence on the Bank's contribution to Africa's development. It is also an exercise in openness and transparency which signals the Bank's strengths and weaknesses, thereby providing stakeholders the assurance that AfDB is a veritable change agent on the continent.
The launch event, chaired by the Bank's regional policy and operations Vice President, Aloysius Ordu, was also attended by the human development director, Agnes Soucat, and the private sector department Director, Tim Turner, among others.
