I will handover to new President on September 1 – Kaberuka
About 5000 delegates from all over the world are gathered at the ongoing 50th Anniversary Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in the Ivorian capital Abidjan. This is the meeting at which the Board of Governors will elect a new President on June 28, 2015.
The Board of Governors is made up of representatives of the member states, usually ministers of finance, planning or central bank governors or their duly designated alternates.
In his speech at the opening of the 50th Anniversary Meeting, current President, Dr. Donald Kaberuka said he will handover to the new President on September 1, 2015. His tenure ends on August 31.
Dr. Kaberuka said when he was elected, he received 78 percent of the votes, and he expects that his successor would receive a higher percentage of votes than he had.
His 10 years of two-five year terms end this year and there are eight candidates vying to step into his shoes.
They are; Sufian Ahmed of Ethiopia, Dr. Cristina Duarte of Cape Verde, Dr Samura Kamara of Sierra Leone, Dr Akinwunmi Adeshina of Nigeria, Mr Jalloul Ayed of Tunisia, Dr Kordjé Bédoumra of Chad, Mr Birama Boubacar Sidibe of Mali and Thomas Z. Sakala of Zimbabwe.
One of these candidates would be elected to take over from Dr. Kaberuka, and would be expected to continue in the strides he had achieved or do more, but it won’t be an easy pair of shoes to fill.
Established in 1964 as a multilateral development finance institution to fight poverty and promote sustainable economic growth and social progress in Africa, by the end of 2014, the Bank had made some $103 billion of loans and grants through 4185 different operations.
In 2014, the Bank disbursed a total of $7.3 billion.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi, in Abidjan, Ivory Coast