Osinbajo wants AfDB to prioritise development agenda

As the African Development Bank (AfDB) reaffirms its commitment to support Africa in its quest to meet energy challenges, Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osibanjo has urged the bank to ensure it gives attention to energy projects that will help the continent optimise its endowed resources.

Osibanjo gave the advised during the African leaders’ roundtable on energy and climate change at the ongoing annual meetings of the AfDB holding in Lusaka, Zambia.

“Though renewable energy and use of fossil fuels are important; we must optimise our resource endowments while investing in renewable energy sources,” Osibanjo said.

Earlier at the official opening ceremony, Akinwunmi Adesina, AfDB president, said the bank had kept faith with accelerating Africa’s growth, adding, “there is no other option. Africa has already waited for so long.”

Meanwhile, the Vice President said 45 percent of the world’s population with no access to power were from Africa and almost half of that African share was in Nigeria.

According to Osibanjo, “for us, priority today is development and we have to take development seriously,” recalling for instance the fact that 45 percent of those who don’t have access to power in the world are from Africa and adding that almost half of that African share are in Nigeria.

“We are faced with a very dire situation and in most of Africa we simply don’t have power and without power there is very little that can be done.”

Africa has shown resistance in the face of the vagaries of the world economy and climate change, with growth of approximately 4 percent and 4.4 percent, according to AfDB projections, giving an overall estimated growth rate of 3 percent albeit revised downward at more than 2 percent. Although a regression, this growth rate is higher than that of the European Union estimated at 1.9 percent.

“We should feel happy,” said the AfDB president, “because the economies of Africa are stable, resistant and resilient with good performance that needs to be improved. That is why AfDB has approved financial support of the order of  $9 billion to regional member countries and the private sector. Even better, it has allocated over $2 billion to the private sector, doing so during the replenishment phase of the African Development Fund.”

Adesina said the results were impressive because, in its 40 or so years of existence, the bank had distributed $40 billion, funds that have had a real impact on 40 African countries. In closing, the AfDB president said he hoped that the African and international press would play an active part in these annual meetings by relaying all the decisions taken at them.

With two-thirds of Africans expected to live in cities by 2050, how Africa urbanises will be critical to the continent’s future growth and development, according to the African Economic Outlook 2016 released earlier at the AfDB Group’s 51^st annual meetings.

“African countries, which include top worldwide growth champions, have shown remarkable resilience in the face of global economic adversity. Turning Africa’s steady resilience into better lives for Africans requires strong policy action to promote faster and more inclusive growth,” Abebe Shimeles, acting director, development research department, at the AfDB.