The case for directing more capital through the African Development Bank is equally strong. But the agenda cannot end with two institutions. Africa also needs deeper stock exchanges and bond markets and better links between them, so that domestic capital can move more efficiently, transparently and across borders.
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Africa’s development debate is too often framed as a search for money from elsewhere. The frame is outdated.
The continent commands vast pools of capital, yet too much of the money remains invested abroad while Africa struggles to finance the infrastructure and industrial transformation it urgently needs.
That argument is no longer confined to academics or financiers. At the Presidential Dialogue on African Union Financial Institutions held on the margins of the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa, former Ghanaian president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo proposed redirecting 30% of African sovereign reserves, held in foreign banks, to African institutions such as the African Development Bank and Afreximbank.
