African leaders should use the 50th Anniversary of the African Development Bank (AfDB) as a platform to evaluate and reaffirm their commitment to the continent’s prosperity and development.

Dr Donald Kaberuka, the president of AfDB, said this yesterday evening during an interview ahead of the Bank’s Annual Meetings which kick off today in Kigali.

The high level conference which ends on May 23, attracted at least 2,500 delegates from all over the world and key speakers expected will include Heads of State and other high ranking officials from across the continent and beyond.

"Africa has defined its agenda for 2063 that African leaders will adopt in the next Africa Union (AU) summit. The meeting seeks to forge a  way forward for everything in Africa, including trade, prosperity, and peace, among others,” Kaberuka said.

"We intend to reaffirm the choices made by the leaders but in particular to indicate what each one of us will do to help realise our vision.”

Kaberuka said visualising AU’s agenda for a prosperous Africa in the next 50 years is commendable, adding that continuous assessments are important to evaluate the continent’s transformation.

"It is good to envisage the future. What we ought to do now is to take each step at a time to make Agenda 2063 achievable,” he said.

Overcoming challenges

Kaberuka, said during his tenure, he was able to see the Bank grow despite global and continental challenges.

"The headquarters of this Bank are in the Ivory Coast. The bank left Ivory Coast 10 years ago owing to political  tensions at that time. The expectation was that the crisis would be short-lived, so that the Bank would go back to its original headquarters. It never happened,” Kaberuka said.

He, however, revealed that they plan to return to the AfDB headquarters in Abidjan. The Bank is currently based in Tunis, Tunisia.

"Secondly, the time of the global financial crisis (2007-2008) was a period that challenged all financial institutions in the world in terms of maintaining their financial health and taking reciprocal measures that were needed to preserve the achievements of the institutions. The impact of the global financial crisis on banks in Africa was, however, not so pronounced, he added.

Kaberuka also recalled the Arab Spring in 2010 as an event that could have affected the Bank’s operations.

"Being based in North Africa, AfDB had to confront the issues of the Arab Spring. But I am glad that we were able to overcome,” he said.

A former minister of finance of Rwanda, Kaberuka was elected president of AfDB in 2005 and reelected for a second term in 2010.

Speakers at the Bank’s summit include Ali Dongote, president of Dangote Group, Nigeria; Mo Ibrahim, president of Mo Ibrahim Foundation; Pascal Lamy, former Director General of World Trade Organisations; Nkosazana Clarice Dlamini-Zuma, the chairperson of African Union Commission; and Sarah Bloom Raskin, the Deputy Secretary, US Treasury; US, among others.