Nigeria’s Akinwunmi Adesina was Thursday elected new president of the
African Development Bank (AfDB) in a thrilling vote that saw major heavyweights
from North Africa and southern Africa stripped away early in the opening
rounds.
The dapper bow-tie wearing
Agriculture and Rural Development minister will be a popular choice with the
Africanist policy community, but will also provide a major boost for Nigeria’s
flagging geopolitical ambitions, with a new president set to be sworn-in on May
29.
The Mail & Guardian report continues:
He has widely heralded innovations
in hugely improving his country’s often-precarious food security position, but
was not as steeped in finance as some of his rivals, the majority of who were
all serving or former finance ministers.
He however had arguably the most
impressive academic credentials.
The vote
Three candidates had been left in
the nerve-wracking race to head the 50-year-old bank.
Adesina, Cape Verde’s Cristina
Duarte and Kordje Bedoumra of Chad were the only contestants still standing by
early evening on Thursday, as AfDB governors sought a successor to Donald
Kaberuka, who will have served the maximum two terms.
A winning candidate needs at least
50.01% of both the regional and non-regional votes. The latter are members who
are not from Africa and wield 40% of the vote. They include the US, China,
Japan and a raft of European countries and were brought in in 1982 to help
boost the capital base of the bank, which was at the time starved of
cash.
Nigeria has the highest voting power
of the bank’s members, ahead of the United States.
Sierra Leone’s Foreign Affairs
minister Samura Kamara, who as finance minister led his country’s
reconstruction effort, was the first to fall in the opening round, though few eyebrows
would have been raised at his early exit, given his region had propped up three
other stronger candidates.
But the identity of the next
candidate to be eliminated was more surprising, as Ethiopia’s Sufian Ahmed
tumbled out. His country’s finance and economic development minister, he had
been one of the heavy-hitters expected to at least make the final rounds of
voting.
Mali’s Birama Side lasted longer
than forecast by analysts, becoming the third candidate to be knocked
out.
Tunisia’s Jaloul Ayed was next, as
North Africa lost a chance to head the bank for a third time.
The bank’s sixth president, Omar
Kabbaj, is credited with instituting reforms that set the bank on its current
path, while Kaberuka cemented its place as the continent’s premier development
financier.
Zimbabwe’s Thomas Sakala, a former
AfDB insider, tumbled out next. He had come in on the backing of southern
Africa, but his bid run into headwinds when it was revealed that he had been a
benefit of “primaries” which is perceived to be against bank rules.
Good Nigerian
spell
Nigerians might be forgiven for
thinking the country is enjoying a brilliant spell, after president-elect
Muhammadu Buhari became one of only a handful of African opposition leaders to
defeat an incumbent comprehensively, but perhaps one of the proudest moments
was the grace with which Goodluck Jonathan accepted defeat.
Nigeria’s outgoing Finance Minister
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala immediately tweeted’ “Great news! Nigeria’s Akin Adesina
has won the AfDB presidency after our strong campaign! Great campaign! Great
candidate!”
Beyond Adesina’s victory, his
triumph signalling a significant change in continental power politics. Until
recently, it was the custom that the big and richer nations kept the smaller
countries happy by ceding the leadership of continental bodies to them.
The first major break from that came
in 2012 when Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was elected chairperson of the African
Union Commission. South Africa is the richest country on the continent, and
Nigeria its largest economy and most populous nation.
It might seem, like with the World
Bank and IMF, the big boys and girls in Africa, have also finally taken over
the stage by combining back-office clout with executive power.
All attention now shifts to Adesina.
In early March he gave an insight into his likely agenda, telling news agency
AFP in late March that he wanted to “finish off the white elephants”, in a
reference to useless luxury projects that are often financed using
international aid and built by foreign businessmen, and which reek of
corruption.
He called for “intelligent
infrastructure that is more productive, more competitive”. He also urged more
cooperation across borders, pitching ideas such as an “African Google”, a
transnational electricity market, and a regional stock exchange. The AfDB might
just have got its first digital president.
- Source: Mail & Guardian Africa; This is article was first published by MGAfrica.com
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