On Thursday in Nairobi, Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, proposed 10 innovative ideas to strengthen regional integration and development in Africa.
"The African people expect concrete action from our meeting here in Nairobi; African integration is everybody's business," said Adesina, setting the tone. He was speaking at the third gathering of senior officials of regional and continental institutions and African development finance institutions organised on the sidelines of the Bank Group's Annual Meetings, from 27 to 31 May.
The meeting follows on from the Accra and Sharm El-Sheikh meetings and its main goal was to study options for a joint response to the challenges and opportunities related to regional integration in Africa.
The 10 ideas advanced by President Adesina include the following: strengthening support for the Executive Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), developing the regional corridors (road, rail) that are vital to regional integration and to the implementation of the AfCFTA, and expanding electricity transmission lines and energy production. In this respect, the World Bank and the African Development Bank are committed to providing electricity to 300 million people by 2030, or half of those currently lacking this basic service. The African Development Bank is also relying on its ambitious Desert-to-Power programme to provide solar-generated electricity to another 250 million people.
In addition to helping young people by creating jobs by developing the manufacturing and farming sectors - the main providers of jobs - Adesina advocated for developing the digital economy - his fifth recommendation - including artificial intelligence and the creation of datacentres. His sixth proposal was to establish special agri-food areas to take advantage of the continent's enormous agricultural potential.
The seventh proposal involves the development of the manufacturing sector by creating added value through the processing industries. His eighth concerns the introduction of digital payments and investment in Fintech. Finally, he pushed for an expansion of the capital market and the establishment of a genuine aviation market to reduce exorbitant inter-African costs and strengthen regional integration.
Adesina reiterated that there could be no development without security. The African Development Bank, in collaboration with the African Union Commission, is therefore preparing financing instruments to promote peace and bolster security. The Bank plans to invest in the reconstruction of socio-economic infrastructure (schools, dams, roads, etc.) destroyed during times of conflict, and in education, health and the enhancement of security capacities and institutions.
"The lack of security increases the level of risk perceived by investors, said Adesina. "We have recently been talking about, with the African Union, the establishment of a facility to support regional economic communities and the African security architecture." He pointed out that the Bank had agreed with the AU on the creation of an independent African credit rating agency and was working on setting up an African stability mechanism to help countries cope with economic upheaval.
"When the African Union and the African Development Bank were created, one of the main duties entrusted to them was regional integration, and the economic communities are the instruments for achieving this objective," said Albert Muchanga, Commissioner for Trade and Industry at the African Union Commission. He added that the commission was drawing up the instruments for an African common market that would make Africa the world's largest market, with 54 member countries.
Omar Aliou Touray, President of the Commission of the Economic Community of West African States, and Ado Elhadji Abou, Executive Secretary of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, insisted that development initiatives give due consideration to security.
A Bank committed to integration
Participants praised the leading role played by the African Development Bank in funding economic and regional integration.
Ould Sidi Tah, President of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa called the meeting "historic", while Gilberto Da Piedade Verissimo, Chairman of the Commission of the Economic Community of Central African States, acknowledged the Bank's actions in building corridors, notably between Cameroon and the Central African Republic.
Chileshe Mpundu Kapwepwe, Secretary General of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, stressed the need to build capacity "to produce and trade locally in Africa". Alain Ebobissé, CEO of Africa50, and Serge Ekué, President of the West African Development Bank, noted that for certain major integration projects African development finance institutions can raise their own funding resources without external intervention.
Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman of Afreximbank, pointed out that 13 African and Caribbean countries are interconnected for secure payments and that "despite the pandemic, demand in our countries has not declined."
Nardos Bekele-Thomas, CEO of the African Union Development Agency, considers that greater synergies are needed to pool experience on integration. Hannan Morsy, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, welcomed the channelling of IMF Special Drawing Rights to multilateral development banks, and said that her institution was ready to coordinate discussions on the reform of the global financial architecture.
Following on from a technical meeting in Abidjan in April, stakeholders called for the launch of a cooperation platform and drew up a three-year joint action plan to improve coordination of large-scale initiatives and flagship programmes: operationalisation of the AfCFTA Adjustment Fund, capitalisation of regional development banks, operationalisation of the $15 billion Southern African Development Community Regional Development Fund.
A more coordinated approach
Participants supported the adoption of a joint action plan of initiatives likely to steer and inform future cooperation among the institutions at a technical level over the next few years. This would include a coordinated effort on investments in regional corridors, joint advocacy for a strong replenishment of ADF-17 resources, joint fund-raising activities to implement large-scale corridor projects, targeted institutional support for continental institutions and regional economic communities, the implementation of the AfCFTA, and funding targeted capacity-building programmes.
The heads of regional and continental institutions also welcomed the establishment of a technical cooperation platform, which is likely to strengthen the coordination and synergies of regional and continental actions. The Bank instituted this meeting with regional economic communities and African development finance institutions at its 2022 Annual Meetings in Accra, Ghana.
