Kenya: Ex-AfDB Boss Calls for a New Era of Strong African Institutions At 9th Babacar Ndiaye Lecture

London — Former President of the African Development Bank (AfDB),Donald Kaberuka has called for Africa to strengthen and integrate its financial and governance institutions to safeguard the continent's future in a rapidly fragmenting global order.

Delivering the 2025 Babacar Ndiaye Lecture on the sidelines of the World Bank Group/IMF Annual Meetings in Washington DC, Kaberuka warned that "the world is not waiting for Africa; therefore, Africa must not wait for the world," and urged African nations to take ownership of their development agenda through resilient, homegrown institutions.

Reflecting on global power shifts, Kaberuka pointed to the return of mercantilism; rising narrow national interests; the end of the aid era; weakened global institutions; and the erosion of multilateralism as the five trends that are reshaping the global economy.

He advised that for Africa, that means turning inward, while leading the charge for a renewed global architecture.

"We can no longer rely on post-war institutions that were never designed to address Africa's challenges," he said. "Strong nations are built on strong, homegrown institutions; not on borrowed ideas or conditional generosity."

Kaberuka emphasized that Africa's development requires an ecosystem approach, where institutions across sectors - finance, trade, peace and security, health, and governance - operate in coordinated harmony rather than isolation.

"Like an orchestra, African financial institutions on their own will not get to the end point. It has to be part of an ecosystem of African financial institutions and not simply financial institutions. They have to operate together in a symphony," he urged.

Kaberuka said Africa Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) must be commended for exemplifying this model through its support for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the regional economic communities and other initiatives and institutions of the continent.

Kaberuka, who is also the Chairman and Managing Partner of SouthBridge, a financial advisory and investment firm, further argued that Africa must lead in reshaping global governance to reflect 21st-century realities and replace the post-World War II institutions such as the Bretton Woods system which were primarily designed for the reconstruction of Europe and Japan and not for the needs of emerging African economies.

Read the original article on Capital FM.