The African Development Bank (AfDB) says it has so far granted loans of over $8 billion to institutions in Africa to mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis.
AfDB president Dr. Donald Kaberuka said at the just-concluded African Economic Conference in Addis Ababa last weekend that the bank had gone into new areas including trade finance and has significantly improved on its process as well as response time and reactive capacity.
The conference was jointly organised by the AfDB Group and the ECA, under the theme: “Fostering development in an era of financial economic and crises”.
The forum was a think-tank designed to bring together Africa’s central bank governors, ministers of finance, African researchers, policy makers and development agencies to brain-storm and come up with mechanisms for tackling the continent’s development challenges.
He said the global financial crisis had demonstrated the paucity of crisis response instruments, which require remedial steps, explaining that the AfDB was assisting African countries to mitigate the impact of the crisis through specific interventions, strategic orientation and advisory services.
According to Kaberuka, the crisis has once again exposed Africa’s “Achilles heels” perpetual dependence on commodity exports, which has been the bane of its economies for several decades.
He underscored the need for diversification, noting that the bank would continue to focus on its areas of priority such as infrastructure, promoting private sector, regional integration, governance, higher education and agriculture.
Jean Ping, Chairman of the African Union Commission, praised the efforts deployed by the AfDB and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to help African countries cope with the crisis from inception.
He said that the AEC was a veritable platform for generating strategies for re-launching sustainable growth in African countries.
“The world is now conscious that it would be impossible to continue to ignore an entire continent, which is home to one-seventh of world population with a market of 1.4 million consumers by 2020/2025,” he said.
The continent’s development challenges included poverty and inequality, foreign investment, fiscal and monetary policy, regional integration, remittances, competitiveness of the financial services sector, banking sector performance and aid effectiveness.
Others were development finance, private sector development, health issues, agricultural growth strategies as well as growth and macroeconomic perspectives.
The AEC, which has earned credibility as the premier high level forum for debate on African economic and development issues, was inaugurated in November 2006 by the AfDB.
It had been jointly organised by the AfDB and the ECA since 2007.
AfDB president Dr. Donald Kaberuka said at the just-concluded African Economic Conference in Addis Ababa last weekend that the bank had gone into new areas including trade finance and has significantly improved on its process as well as response time and reactive capacity.
The conference was jointly organised by the AfDB Group and the ECA, under the theme: “Fostering development in an era of financial economic and crises”.
The forum was a think-tank designed to bring together Africa’s central bank governors, ministers of finance, African researchers, policy makers and development agencies to brain-storm and come up with mechanisms for tackling the continent’s development challenges.
He said the global financial crisis had demonstrated the paucity of crisis response instruments, which require remedial steps, explaining that the AfDB was assisting African countries to mitigate the impact of the crisis through specific interventions, strategic orientation and advisory services.
According to Kaberuka, the crisis has once again exposed Africa’s “Achilles heels” perpetual dependence on commodity exports, which has been the bane of its economies for several decades.
He underscored the need for diversification, noting that the bank would continue to focus on its areas of priority such as infrastructure, promoting private sector, regional integration, governance, higher education and agriculture.
Jean Ping, Chairman of the African Union Commission, praised the efforts deployed by the AfDB and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to help African countries cope with the crisis from inception.
He said that the AEC was a veritable platform for generating strategies for re-launching sustainable growth in African countries.
“The world is now conscious that it would be impossible to continue to ignore an entire continent, which is home to one-seventh of world population with a market of 1.4 million consumers by 2020/2025,” he said.
The continent’s development challenges included poverty and inequality, foreign investment, fiscal and monetary policy, regional integration, remittances, competitiveness of the financial services sector, banking sector performance and aid effectiveness.
Others were development finance, private sector development, health issues, agricultural growth strategies as well as growth and macroeconomic perspectives.
The AEC, which has earned credibility as the premier high level forum for debate on African economic and development issues, was inaugurated in November 2006 by the AfDB.
It had been jointly organised by the AfDB and the ECA since 2007.
