AfDB 2024 annual meetings to shape up Africa’s transformation

About 4,000 delegates will converge in Nairobi, Kenya, as the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, strategies with a renewed sense of enthusiasm to advance the transformation of Africa – the world’s second-largest and most resource-rich continent.

This is in the light of the Group’s 2024 Annual Meetings, which would be held from May 27 to 31, on the theme: “Africa’s transformation; the African Development Bank and the reform of the global financial architecture.”

At the meetings, the AfDB would explore how best to fast-track addressing the structural economic challenges, as well as reforms in the financial architecture to spur transformation across the continent.

During the 2024 Annual Meetings, the Board of Governors would review the annual report of the finances and operations and other activities of AfDB and the African Development Fund for 2023.

The 2024 annual meetings will also mark the 59th session of the Board of Governors of the African Development Bank and the 50th session of the Board of Governors of the African Development Fund.

There would also be the launch of AfDB’s 60th anniversary.

Speaking at a pre-conference on Wednesday, April 4, Professor Vincent Nmehielle, Secretary-General, AfDB, noted that it had become more crucial for the Bank to take further steps to accelerate Africa’s economic transformation.

He noted that despite a sustained economic growth over the past two decades, Africa’s economic transformation remained quiet incomplete.

Governors of the Bank Group, experts, and development partners, would, therefore, hold series of dialogues to reflect on AfDB’s new 10-year strategy, culminating into outcomes that would quicken Africa’s transformation.

The strategy would explore ways by which AfDB and other multilateral banks could respond optimally to the call on them “to work better together to significantly scale up resources for the sustainable development of the continent,” he said.

On governance and resource management, Prof Nmehielle called for effective management of Africa’s resources by minimising waste.

“Africa must come to the point where it sees governance as an important instrument of economic development. We all have to put our hands on deck – the government, the private sector and all citizens,” he said.

Regarding global financial architecture reforms, the Secretary-General indicated that since 1945, “the development finance structured and deployed does not favour Africa, and the developing world and there is, therefore, the need for reform.”

Prof Kevin Urama, the Chief Economist of AfDB, said: “In all our research, we have found that financing has been a major constraint of accelerated transformation on the continent.”

Hence, the urgent need to relook at ways to mobilise more funding, including capitalising on Africa’s green wealth to better drive transformation than witnessed in years past, Prof Urama, who also is the Vice President for Economic Governance and Knowledge Management, AfDB, said.