Newly-elected AfDB president, Akinwumi Adesina, has his work cut out for him, but it is not a tea party, reports Correspondent, SAM NWOKORO.
In a couple weeks now, the newly-elected president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) will assume office as the eight president of the regional financial institution. The former Nigeria’s Agriculture Minister was elected last May to replace Donald Kaberuka, 63, from Rwanda.
The election of Adesina did not take the type of lobbying expected, owing to Adesina’s pedigree as Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria between 2011 and 2015. An avalanche of testimonials from Nigeria’s present and past policy-makers assailed his nomination and he was chosen at the 28th Annual general meeting (AGM) of the bank to replace Kaberuka.
Fine homeboy
While he superintended the Nigerian agriculture sector, Adesina brought in a lot of reforms that plugged dangerous openings from where the cankerworm of racketeering was eating up farm inputs, and opened the sector to serious entrepreneurs.
Prior to his coming, the sector was still at subsistence level where only rural men and women till the ground with antique farm tools. The sector was poorly formalised and was not as such inclusive. He attracted many hitherto uninterested compatriots into the sector.
In globally renowned profile publication, Forbes, Adesina emerged as “Africa’s Person of the Year 2013” for his reforms that empowered more than six million farmers. He had told global development stakeholders present during the award ceremony: “With dwindling oil fortunes and the end of the telecoms boom, the next big investment frontier is unlocking Africa’s vast agricultural potential to feed the continent and the world.”
And Forbes had said: “Adesina is a passionate defender of African farmers who worked relentlessly in unlocking opportunities for farmers and changing Africa’s narrative on agriculture to wealth creation away from poverty reduction.”
Adesina’s stint as agriculture minister also helped Nigeria add another 21 million metric tonnes of food to domestic supply chain, created about 3.5 million non-farm jobs that aided the sector grow and consequently reduced Nigeria’s food import bill from N3.1 trillion in 2011 to unprecedented low of N35 billion by 2014. Food prices stabilised and the amount saved from food import bills created some fiscal buffers.
Truly, Adesina made impact in Nigeria. However, for him to replicate same in the larger African development matrix, there is the daunting task, some fundamental challenges he would certainly encounter, notwithstanding his ability.
AfDB challenges
The AfDB, by all accounts, seems to have failed in meeting with the developmental aspiration of the continent. Though scholars of international affairs attributed this to the behaviour of serial African dictators, especially in the 1970s and 1980s who placed their selfish interest above the economic development of their compatriots.
Another reason that is generally attributed to the low development of the continent and why the AfDB alone cannot salvage much part of the continent currently pining away in poverty is due to the influence of the cold war between the East and the West in the 1940s down to the late ’80s on the political economy of the continent.
“The continent had faced and still faces challenges such as: regional conflicts due to the fact that the colonialists that ruled them took no cognisance of the cultural and tribal differences of the communities they colonised. So when the colonialists were departing, old hatred resurfaced and the ensuing communal strife led to wars and faulty political structures, with attendant political instability which retarded governance and management of resources,” according to an online research journal,
Development Today.
According to the international research journal, desertification, wars, weak institutions and corruption in African countries had hindered the African continent from building a formidable regional financial institution capable of driving development in the region, hence poor capitalisation of the African Development Bank.
Yes, the AfDB is poorly capitalised as at today, considering the enormous development gaps in African economies. With a meagre $100 billion capitalisation, the bank is only able to lend an average of $80 billion yearly, having a balance of roughly $20 billion balance sheet. Perhaps, this is where the expertise of Adesina, who has extensive global contacts, can salvage the bank’s poor balance sheet, if he must replicate the near revolution in agriculture he brought to Nigeria at the global stage, development experts posit.
Brookings Institution’s prescription
Shortly before the election of Adesina in May, the world global rating body, New York-based Brookings Institution, held a roundtable with the board members of the bank where the present and future challenges of the regional financial house was x-rayed.