Tobias Sylvester
Nigeria’s Akinwumi Adesina has been re-elected as the President of the African Development Bank President (AfDB) for a second five-year term.
The election took place electronically at the virtual annual general meeting of the bank on Thursday, August 27, 2020.
With this election, Adesian will spend another five years managing and supervising the affairs of the 56-year-old African bank.
Adesina had appealed on Wednesday for a second term in office after a months-long storm over alleged corruption and poor governance that ended after he was cleared in an independent probe.
In a speech at the AfDB’s annual meetings, Adesina formally requested a second term as president, declaring that he was “doing it with an acute sense of duty and commitment.”
“At this Annual Meetings, I offer myself to you, our Governors, for your consideration for election for a second term, as President.
“I do so, with humility. I do so with a strong sense of duty and commitment and a call to serve Africa and our Bank, selflessly, to the very best of my God-given abilities,” he said, according to a statement issued by the bank.
Adesina, the son of a farming family, became in 2015 the first Nigerian to head the bank, one of the world’s five biggest multilateral lenders and an important but often unseen player in economic development.
He gained continent-wide recognition last October when the AfDB secured $115 billion (105 billion euros) in funding pledges, a move that doubled its capital and cemented its triple-A credit rating.
The number of shareholders in the AfDB rose to 81, Adesina said, with the admission of Ireland. Fifty-four shareholders are African, while the others are from the Americas, Asia and Europe.
Adesina’s re-election is coming barely one month after an Independent Review Panel exonerated him of any ethical wrongdoings, having found no evidence of embezzlement and favouritism against the president.
