Sweden assures AfDB chairman of continued strong support for Africa | African Development Bank
African Development Bank Group President Dr Akinwumi Adesina reinforced the continued strong support for the institution and its development initiatives recently from one of the group’s non-regional member countries, Sweden.
The bank chief made a two-day official visit to Sweden – a member of its powerful Nordic constituency – at the end of September. He met with various senior officials, notably Jenny Ohlsson, State Secretary and Governor of the Bank of Sweden; Helen Eduards, Director General for International Development Cooperation at the Swedish Foreign Ministry; Carin Jämtin, Director General of Sweden’s International Development Agency (SIDA); and Pernilla Meyersson, Riksbank.
There was broad agreement that the African Development Bank – through its High-5 priorities – and the Swedish government – through the objectives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and SIDA – shared common strategic priorities, above all: sustainable development, climate change, food security, the promotion of a productive private sector and the importance of education and equality.
Adesina spoke about the strategic initiatives the bank had launched to promote gender equality and access to finance for women entrepreneurs. He highlighted the bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) program as one of the platforms through which it did this.
He explained that the African Development Bank monitored and tracked the impact of each bank investment on gender through a gender marker system.
Likewise, the bank’s focus on making more opportunities available to young people was emphasized. Adesina said the institution was promoting jobs for youths through its Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund. He said it had proposed a new network of investment banks for youth entrepreneurship, which would soon go to the board for approval and could be launched before the end of this year.
Adesina said the African Development Bank – together with the International Labor Organization – designed a tracking and monitoring system that would identify the impact of all the bank’s activities on job creation.
There was general agreement on the need for continued cooperation to promote renewable energy, which makes up 83% of the Bank’s current energy portfolio – primarily through the Desert to Power initiative, which the African Development Bank is financing in Africa’s Sahel region. Sweden expressed its support for the climate action window that the African Development Bank will create to help low-income African countries gain access to additional resources. These are resources that will help these countries address the impacts of climate change and invest in climate adaptation.
There was agreement on the need to stimulate private investment towards Africa, a goal that SIDA would like to contribute to by offering risk-reducing instruments such as guarantees.
Adesina confirmed that building climate resilient agriculture would be an activity with high potential for development and business opportunities. He said the bank promoted this through two key programmes: its Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) and its special agro-industrial processing zones.
The head of the African Development Bank said the bank’s African Investment Forum, scheduled for early November, would be an ideal platform through which to promote private investment in Africa. He invited Swedish companies and institutional investors to seriously consider attending the upcoming one the boardrooms of the forum scheduled to take place in early November in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
SIDA and the African Development Bank agreed to work to mobilize Swedish institutional investors’ interest in projects through a possible dedicated session of the Africa Investment Forum.
Sweden has supported the African Development Bank’s rapid response to the Covid-19 pandemic with its (the bank’s) Covid-19 Response Facility, and to a potential food crisis with its African Emergency Food Production Facility.
A meeting with IKEA CEO Per Heggenes, Adesina invited IKEA to join the TAAT platform and be part of various other bank-driven initiatives to bring about sustainable development in Africa.
Heggenes said that while IKEA’s resources were modest, the African Development Bank chief welcomed plans to address Africa’s development challenges with large-scale initiatives. He said IKEA had contributed to the climate and planet fund with the Rockefeller Foundation.
He said it was important to focus on things that could bring about demonstrable change, including support for small-scale energy projects, with a pragmatic view of gas. He said it was important to create entrepreneurial jobs, especially with a view to addressing the issue of migration.
It was agreed that the bank and IKEA would explore ways of working together.