5 vie for AfDB Presidency

Five candidates are running to become President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in an election on Thursday (today) during the lender’s annual meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

This year’s annual meetings have the extra dynamic of the election of a new President to take over the helm of the institution after ten years under Dr. Akinwumi Adesina.

The five candidates seeking to take over from Adesina include Senegal’s Amadou Hott, who served as Senegal’s Minister of Economy, Planning and Cooperation (2019-2022), Dr. Samuel Munzele Maimbo from Zambia, who is currently the Vice President for Budget, Performance Review, and Strategic Planning at the World Bank and Mauritania’s Sidi Ould Tah, a former President of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa.

The other two contenders are Chad’s Abbas Mahamat Tolli, an economist and a former Governor of the Bank of Central African States, as well as the only female candidate, South African Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala.

She is the former Senior Vice President of the African Development Bank.

The five candidates have utilized various public engagements to highlight the key priority areas they would focus on if elected to the top job.

Meanwhile, the entire process of electing the new President of the African Development Bank Group takes almost a year.

At the end of the last Annual Meetings in Nairobi, the Governors took the decision to set the calendar for the election of the President of the Bank.

The request for expressions of interest to regional member countries to nominate candidates went out on the 1st of July 2024.

Needless to add that a nominee for the Office of President at the Bank shall be “a person of the highest competence in matters pertaining to the activities, management and administration of the Bank and shall be a national of a regional member state”.

The closing date and time for the receipt of candidatures was on 31 January 2025, no later than 5:00 p.m., Abidjan, local time.