Kinshasa, May 29th, 2025( CPA) – A new president has been elected for a 5-year term at the head of the African Development Bank (AfDB) with 76% of the votes after three rounds of voting at the Sofitel Ivoire in Abidjan on Thursday, CPA learns from an official source.
‘The new president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Mauritanian Sid Ould Tah, was elected with 76% of the vote after three rounds of voting at the Sofitel Ivoire in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where the annual meetings of this continental financial institution are being held,’ according to the official results consulted by the CPA.According to the source, Mr Sidi Ouled Tah, aged 61, succeeds Nigerian Akinwumi Adesina, who presided over the AfDB for 10 years, from 2015 to 2025. The former Mauritanian Economy Minister, Sidi Ould Tah, won ahead of Zambia’s Samuel Munzele Maimbo, who garnered 20.26%, according to the official results.
However, the African Development Bank, founded in 1964, has 81 member countries, including 54 Africans, and is one of the major multilateral development banks. Its resources come mainly from subscriptions by member countries, borrowings on international markets and loan repayments and income.
To win the election, the source pointed out, it was necessary to obtain a double majority: the votes of all the member countries as well as those of the African countries. And on this score, Mr Tah obtained a resounding 72.37% of the African votes. The source reports that a total of five candidates were in the running for this Thursday’s election in the Ivorian economic capital Abidjan where the institution’s headquarters are located. As the voting rounds progressed, Mr Tah rallied the votes of many countries, in a ballot in which the weight of each shareholder state was weighted by the size of its stake in the bank’s capital.
‘I am proud of the legacy I am leaving behind. We have built a world-class financial institution that will continue to advance Africa’s position in a rapidly changing global environment,’ Mr Akinwumi Adesina said on Tuesday, adding that 565 million people in Africa had benefited from AfDB projects over the past ten years. The AfDB has, for example, helped build Africa’s largest wastewater treatment plant in Gabal Al-Asfar, Egypt, contributed to the construction of a bridge between Senegal and Gambia, extended the port of Lomé in Togo, and supported sanitation projects in Lesotho and electricity access in Kenya.
During Mr Akinwumi’s ten years in office, the institution’s subscribed capital has tripled, from 93 billion dollars to 318 billion dollars (82 billion euros to 280 billion euros), it has been learnt. CPA/