Speaking at the opening ceremony on Tuesday, AfDB President Sidi Ould Tah called for sweeping reforms to make development finance institutions “more agile, more accountable, and more responsive” to Africa’s rapidly evolving economic challenges.
Ould Tah said the reforms are aimed at improving implementation capacity, simplifying procedures, and enabling the bank to respond more effectively to structural and economic changes across the continent.
Practical reforms for Africa
“These reforms are not bureaucratic exercises,” he said. “They are practical reforms focused on improving delivery, strengthening execution capacity, simplifying processes, and ensuring that the bank is better equipped to support structural and economic change.”
He stressed the need to move beyond traditional project-by-project financing models towards integrated development platforms capable of generating “catalytic effects” across sectors and regions.
The AfDB president also underscored the importance of strengthening cooperation with governments, regional institutions, private investors, and development partners while adapting the bank’s operations more closely to the realities of its member states.
As part of that strategy, Ould Tah announced plans to establish regional hubs across Africa, including a dedicated Lusophone Africa delivery hub designed to address the legal, institutional, and operational realities of Portuguese-speaking African countries.
“Ultimately, we cannot ask Africa to accelerate while remaining slow ourselves,” he said. “This needs to change.”
Addressing investor perceptions of Africa, Ould Tah argued that the continent’s risks had long been overstated while its resilience, adaptability, and long-term economic potential had been underestimated.
“In finance, we are trained to think constantly about risk. But good finance is not only about identifying risks; it is also about recognising value before everyone else does,” he said.
He added that the global transition towards a more sustainable and interconnected economy, spanning energy transformation, climate resilience, critical minerals, agriculture, and demographics, “will not happen without Africa.”
Africa as a model of innovation
Ould Tah also highlighted Africa’s longstanding culture of reuse and resource efficiency as a model of locally rooted innovation.
“Africans repaired, reused, and repurposed almost everything long before the circular economy became fashionable,” he said, adding that informal shared transport systems across the continent had anticipated modern ride-sharing models.
“Sometimes innovation is not about inventing entirely new things,” he said. “It is sometimes about recognising value early and organising it better. That, in many ways, is also Africa’s challenge for the decades ahead.”
AU calls for greater financial sovereignty
In a parallel call for greater financial independence, Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission Selma Malika Haddadi urged African countries to strengthen financial sovereignty and mobilize domestic resources to finance the continent’s transformation agenda.
Delivering remarks on behalf of Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, Haddadi praised Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso for hosting the meetings and commended his announcement to lift visa requirements for African citizens beginning in 2027.
“We really appreciate the fact that Your Excellency has led by example in announcing the suppression of visas for African citizens, which is instrumental if we are to achieve integration across our continent,” she said.
Haddadi described this year’s meetings' theme, “Mobilising Africa’s Development Financing at Scale in a Fragmented World,” as both timely and urgent, warning that Africa was facing mounting pressures from geopolitical tensions, debt burdens, climate shocks, declining concessional financing, and shifting global priorities.
“In this fragmented world, Africa faces the serious challenge of navigating external vulnerabilities while simultaneously financing its own internal transformation,” she said.
Despite these pressures, Haddadi stressed that Africa possessed the demographic strength and strategic resources needed to become a major engine of global growth.
Home to the world’s youngest population
“The continent is home to the world’s youngest population, vast reserves of critical minerals, the largest free trade area under the AfCFTA, and immense renewable energy potential,” she said. “These strategic advantages position Africa not only as a continent of opportunity, but as a key driver of the global economy in the decades ahead.”
She said the key challenge was no longer whether Africa had potential, but whether it could mobilize financing “at the scale, speed, and quality required” to transform that potential into shared prosperity.
Haddadi also praised Ould Tah for advancing the “Abidjan Consensus” on a new African financial architecture, describing it as a major step towards strengthening cooperation among African financial institutions and reducing dependence on traditional external financing mechanisms.
According to Haddadi, the initiative seeks to bridge Africa’s estimated annual development financing gap of $400 billion while unlocking the continent’s vast domestic savings for productive investment.
She called for greater use of alternative financing instruments, including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, diaspora bonds, green bonds, carbon credits, and digital financial assets.
“Africa currently holds massive pools of domestic capital that remain severely underutilised,” she said. “We must aggressively unlock the immense potential of our insurance sector and institutional pension funds, transforming these domestic savings into long-term capital for development.”
Haddadi added that African multilateral financial institutions, led by the African Development Bank, must cooperate to establish regulatory frameworks capable of directing African capital into high-impact regional infrastructure and development projects.
“African capital must build the African future,” she said.
She also highlighted the recent establishment of the African Credit Rating Agency, describing it as a “historic and transformative” step towards strengthening Africa’s financial independence and improving the continent’s representation in global financial markets.
New partnership to boost health in Africa
On the sidelines of the annual meetings, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the AfDB Group signed a new memorandum of understanding aimed at positioning maternal health and demographic resilience at the centre of Africa’s economic transformation agenda.
The agreement, signed in Brazzaville on Monday, frames investment in maternal health not only as a healthcare priority but also as a driver of economic growth, productivity, resilience, and human capital development to help African countries harness their demographic dividend.
Despite significant progress in reducing maternal mortality across Africa, the two institutions said major challenges persist due to structural barriers, unequal access to quality healthcare services, and financing gaps.
Diene Keita said the partnership reflected a shared commitment to place women’s health and human capital development at the core of Africa’s development agenda.
“Immense opportunity is within Africa’s grasp if we make strategic investments in women and young people,” Keita said. “Economic progress for Africa is only possible if we prioritise women’s health and address one of the continent’s most pressing development challenges: preventable maternal deaths.”
Under the agreement, UNFPA and the AfDB will explore innovative financing and implementation mechanisms to help countries unlock greater investment in women and youth as drivers of Africa’s growth.
Priority areas include modernizing the health workforce through digital training, strengthening local procurement systems, upgrading climate-resilient health infrastructure, and supporting the digitisation of health information systems.
The two institutions highlighted several achievements from their cooperation since 1992, including modernizing population data systems in Côte d’Ivoire’s latest census, expanding emergency obstetric and newborn care services across 11 health districts in Cameroon, and supporting reproductive health and climate adaptation initiatives in Madagascar and across East and Southern Africa.
Short link: