Dr Akinwumi Adesina says his passion to mobilize global capital for Africa’s development will continue way beyond his presidency of the African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org), which ends on 1st September 2025.
In a keynote speech titled “Tilting Global Capital for Unlocking Investment Opportunities in Africa”, delivered at the Standard Chartered Africa Summit on July 31, in Lagos, Adesina said, “Together, let us tilt global capital to unlock Africa’s assets. As I step into a new future, you can be sure this will be my focus! For I will always have Africa in my heart and in my sight.”
The Standard Chartered Africa Summit, with the theme, “Africa to the Globe: Innovation, Resilience, and Growth”, brought together corporate leaders, policymakers, investors and other stakeholders. Attendees included Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote; Nigeria’s Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole; Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Chairman, FSDH Group and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School; and award-winning author, Chimamanda Adichie.
Adesina kicked off by alluding to his signature optimism about Africa’s prospects. “When I was approached to consider delivering the keynote speech, I did not hesitate. How can someone known as ‘Africa’s Optimist in Chief’ not accept to speak on Africa!”, he said.
Highlighting the African Development Bank’s focus on bold financial innovation in the last decade, Adesina declared, “The African Development Bank is not just waiting for more capital, we are innovating to do more with the capital we have. Through our balance sheet optimization initiatives, we are stretching every dollar of risk capital further. Our ambition is threefold: free up capital, crowd in investors and amplify development impact.”
He outlined several ambitious and innovative financing solutions pioneered by the African Development Bank, supported by its AAA rating which it has maintained over the last decade:
- Over $102 billion in low-cost financing to Africa since 2015
- Capital raise from $93 billion in 2015 to $318 billion in 2024, the highest in the Bank’s sixty-year history
- Spearheading, in partnership with the Inter-American Development, the rechanneling of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to multilateral development banks—a move that will of the rechanneled SDRs as hybrid capital, which can be leveraged by 4-8 times.
- The Africa Investment Forum, launched by the Bank in collaboration with strategic partners, has mobilized over $225 billion in investment interest across infrastructure, energy, agribusiness, manufacturing and other critical sectors, since 2018
- The biggest social bond issuance by multilateral development banks, amounting to $14 billion in the past eight years.
- $10 billion of long-term global benchmark bonds issued in 2025 alone to finance projects across Africa
- The first-ever synthetic securitization of a non-sovereign portfolio by a multilateral development bank, involving the transfer of mezzanine risk of a $1 billion portfolio of private sector loans.
- The first-ever private sector hybrid capital transaction by a multilateral development bank, valued at $750 million—with over 275 investors participating with a book order of $5.1 billion, making it the largest ever book order achieved by the African Development Bank.
- A Room to Run Sovereign offering that created an estimated $2 billion in new sovereign lending headroom
- 16 partial credit and partial risk guarantees valued at close to $3 billion, mobilizing $ 5 billion for the continent
- A $250 million partial credit guarantee that allowed Egypt to raise the first ever Panda Bond by an African country on the Chinese capital market, valued at $500 million.
Adesina praised Standard Chartered Bank’s successful partnership with the African Development Bank’s successful partnership, which notably delivered a partial credit guarantee for Côte d’Ivoire in 2023 — a deal that won ‘Sovereign Syndicated Loan Deal of the Year’ at the 2025 Bonds, Loans & ESG Capital Markets Africa Awards in Cape Town, South Africa, in April.
“The Standard Chartered Bank participated as the sole lender in the 2023 Cote d’Ivoire’s sustainable loan partial credit guarantee transaction. The African Development Bank was able to unlock €533 million from the Standard Chartered Bank in support of the country’s financing needs.”
He also congratulated Standard Chartered on being named Best Transaction Bank at the Asset Triple A Treasurise Awards in Hong Kong. “Your record breaking 127 accolades reflects an exceptionally strong track record of excellence in banking and finance, globally.”
Adesina urged global financial institutions to partner more strategically with the African Development Bank and other multilateral development banks, to scale up capital flows to Africa.
He called for greater use of risk mitigation and credit enhancement instruments, mainstreaming of best practices in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), and increased collaboration to scale up local currency financing solutions.
Adesina’s delegation included the Bank Group’s Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization Solomon Quaynor, and the Director General of the Nigeria Country Department, Dr. Abdul Kamara.
The African Development Bank’s current active portfolio in Nigeria is the largest in the Bank, valued at $5.1 billion and comprising 52 operations, equally distributed between the public and private sectors, with 26 projects each. National operations account for 84% of the portfolio, while multinational operations constitute the balance of 16%.
The Bank Group is set to establish a Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank in Nigeria, as part of a pan-African portfolio designed to create and finance entrepreneurship opportunities for young Africans.
The Bank is also rolling out Phase 1 of its Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones across 8 States, including the Federal Capital Territory. Construction has already begun in four States of Kaduna, Cross River, Oyo and Ogun. Phase 2, which will cover the remaining 28 States, is scheduled to take off from September 2025.
Africa Fact: The ancient Egyptians had the same type of tropically adapted skeletal proportions as modern Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions where she states that: “The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations.”
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Fun South African Fact: There are around 3,000 shipwrecks off the coast of South Africa.
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Chad: You have two cows. They will probably outlive you.