Lynn Bolin | Cape Town, South Africa
/20 April 2005 01:53/
South Africa is backing former Zimbabwean finance minister Simba Makoni in the upcoming election of the new president of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), the multilateral development finance agency focusing on the African continent, the AfDB said on Wednesday.
Makoni, who is also the candidate of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), is visiting South Africa this week as part of his international lobbying efforts to succeed current AfDB president Omar Kabbaj, the former deputy minister of finance of Morocco.
Kabbaj has held the position since 1995, having been appointed to two five-year terms.
Makoni said he would like to play a leading role in keeping Africa on its current growth trajectory, at the same time tackling poverty through development of the region.
According to the International Monetary Fund's latest /Africa Regional Economic Outlook/ report, economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa jumped to an eight-year high of 5% in 2004, while average inflation fell to a 25-year low.
Makoni said he supports the AfDB's efforts to become the premier institution for development in Africa, providing quality assistance to its members in their attempts to meet the United Nations's Millennium Development Goals.
"I believe that the aspects of its work in which the bank can lead have to do with the quality and impact of its support to regional member countries, rather than volume of financial resources. The bank can and should also be leading in providing development ideas," he observed.
Makoni was selected by finance ministers and central bank governors of the seven countries making up the SADC -- South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Lesotho, Malawi and Mauritius -- in a three-way race. He is currently MD of his own Harare-based business development consultancy, Makonsult, which he established in 1997, and was the finance minister of Zimbabwe from 2000 to 2002.
He was also a member of Zimbabwe's first post-independent Parliament and government, serving as a minister from 1980 to 1984 in various posts, including the ministries of agriculture, industry and energy.
As the executive secretary of the SADC, he steered the organisation through a difficult political period during South Africa's transition from apartheid state to an independent democracy. His achievements include transforming the SADC from a loose informal club to a treaty-based legal entity.
The eighth president of the AfDB will be elected for a five-year term at the bank's annual meetings in Abuja on May 18 and 19. There are six other candidates for the AfDB post: Ghana's Kingsley Amoako (sponsored by Zambia, Ethiopia and Uganda); Nigeria's Olabisi Ogunjobi, (Senegal, Benin, Gambia, Sierra Leone and Mauritania); Egypt's Ismael Hassan (Djibouti); Donald Kaberuka of Rwanda (Kenya and Seychelles); Cameroon's Theodore Nkodo (Burundi); and Gabon's Casmir Oye-Mba (Morocco, Burkina Faso, Congo, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde).
Makoni said he would ensure strong and continued cooperation between the bank and other African continental bodies, especially the African Union, the Regional Economic Communities and the Economic Commission for Africa. He would ensure that the programmes of the bank are designed, and investments undertaken, within the context of the New Partnership for Africa's Development.
The AfDB Group, which comprises the African Development Bank, the African Development Fund and the Nigeria Trust Fund, was established in 1964 by the Organisation of African Unity to mobilise resources to finance Africa's development and social progress.
It currently has 53 African member states as shareholders as well as 24 non-African countries, including the United States, China, India, Brazil, Germany, The Netherlands, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The bank's authorised capital currently stands at about $33-billion. Between 1967 and 2004, the bank approved loans and grants amounting to $53-billion.
The organisation -- which was in jeopardy in the early 1990s -- has, as a result of extensive reforms from 1994, now become one of the only AAA-rated financial institutions in Africa.
South Africa joined the AfDB in 1995, and in 2001 increased its shareholding from 0,88% to 4,1% of the total shares, becoming the fifth-largest shareholder after Nigeria, the US and Japan.
South Africa qualifies for non-concessionary funding from the AfDB in the form of slightly preferential agreements, payment periods and interest rates.
Although South Africa does not qualify for the more generous concessionary funding from the AfDB or the African Development Fund, it contributes to the African Development Fund. Its membership also allows South African companies to bid for contracts on AfDB-sponsored projects in other African countries. -- I-Net Bridge
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