My vision is to ensure that the African Development Bank (AfDB) is equipped to meet the demands of this critical moment, as governments across our continent navigate an uncertain environment and constrained public resources. Africa needs significantly higher rates of growth to successfully navigate today’s development challenges and capture tomorrow’s opportunities.

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To ensure that the average African is demonstrably better off by the end of my tenure, we must prioritize efficiency and impact in every aspect of the Bank’s on-the-ground work.

 

Africa will not achieve middle-income status or sustainable growth without an AfDB which is focused on pace and scale. We need to create opportunities to get one billion people to work as quickly as possible, and to do this, we must identify and support industries that will directly improve livelihoods and ignite prosperity and trade on the continent. This calls for bold, results-driven leadership that is unafraid to make hard decisions. It requires a focus on and commitment to tackling the last mile of development – which is the crucial piece to ensuring that our efforts lead to tangible outcomes for the people and governments of Africa.

 

Building on the achievements of the current presidency, I intend to focus on the clarity of purpose and mission of the AfDB. This involves reinforcing governance structures, ensuring that the Bank’s leadership and operations reflect Africa’s diversity, and strengthening the core drivers of the Bank’s success: our staff, our finances, and our institutional voice. Operational effectiveness, productivity, and decentralization will be paramount to delivering real and sustained impact. The Bank must be led and managed like a top-tier institution, with a full-time focus on measurable tasks and outcomes.

 

The challenges ahead are undeniable. Many governments face significant debt burdens, are inhibited from mobilizing sufficient resources, and are disproportionately affected by climate change. The AfDB must play a pivotal role in helping governments enhance public financial management through diverse, targeted debt strategies and expanding revenue sources—domestic, regional, and global. We must support our government clients in building out the enabling environment they envision for their national economies, including through digitalization. The AfDB can and must lean into its unique value with respect to analytics and data to fuel decision-making, stakeholder engagement, and market access.

 

At the heart of this vision is a commitment to delivering large-scale, generational job creation in line with Africa’s strengths and potential. From agriculture to the creative industries, we need strategies that unlock our continent’s unique opportunities. Achieving these goals requires addressing the underlying enablers of growth. A key focus will be on infrastructure development, ensuring access to adequate energy to power long-term growth, and the role of the digital economy in accelerating progress, bridging opportunity gaps, and enabling Africa to leapfrog traditional development pathways.

 

We must seize Africa’s opportunities for faster-than-average growth. Despite global weaknesses, the continent is growing and therefore has the potential to reduce poverty and create prosperity. It’s time to press the accelerator. This will require rebalancing trade deficits and reimagining regional trading partnerships, addressing imported inflation, and strengthening manufacturing capacity across the continent, among other interventions.

 

In order to navigate the uncertainties of today and tomorrow, I will maintain a relentless focus on good country outcomes – and on achieving not only economic progress but also building resilience and futureproofing. Underlying all our work will be a firm commitment to equity and inclusion. Growth must be shared, with deliberate efforts to uplift women, youth, and underserved communities. We will leave no country behind: those grappling with or at risk of fragility, conflict, and violence will be supported by the AfDB’s pocketbook and in-country capabilities with the goal of stability through development. It’s time to close the opportunity gaps that so many people on our continent are up against.

 

None of this can be achieved alone—not by one individual leader, and not by one institution. Partnerships are essential to delivering on this vision. Earning the trust of Presidents, Ministers of Finance, and other key stakeholders will be paramount, and the Bank will work tirelessly as a reliable partner in achieving national priorities. We will work closely with other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and collaborate with the local and regional private sector. We will support governments in maximizing the potential of public-private partnerships to ease fiscal pressures, and in strengthening the capacity of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which remain critical in many sectors.

 

The AfDB’s unparalleled reach enables us to target underserved communities, both rural and urban, and modernized initiatives will allow us to engage digital societies in our work. While we may not be the largest player among our MDB peers, we have the unique ability to make a difference where it matters most.

 

My vision for the Bank has less to do with announcements and press conferences, and more to do with rolling up our sleeves, focusing on the details, and getting things done. Together, we must seize the opportunities before us, address the challenges we face, and ensure that Africa’s progress is inclusive, resilient, and scaled up for generations to come. Above all else, we must spend every hour of every day focused on one simple goal: delivering.

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-Sam Maimbo