The African Development Bank Group on Thursday concluded a landmark Consultative Dialogue on a New African Financial Architecture for Development (NAFAD, formerly NAFA), with a bold roadmap to address Africa’s development financing gap.
The day-long dialogue held 9th April, resulted in the adoption of an 11-point “Abidjan Consensus” on NAFAD. NAFAD is designed to overcome the structural obstacles to mobilising resources on a large-scale, to plug Africa’s $400 billion annual development finance gap.
Among the commitments made by participants was a resolution to unlock Africa’s vast domestic savings, and channel them into productive investment on the continent. They also pledged continuous coordination and annual reviews to ensure sustained momentum and track progress.
The New African Financial Architecture for Development is a core part of Bank Group President Dr Sidi Ould Tah’s Four Cardinal Points strategic vision.
Thursday’s Consultative Dialogue, which took place in the Ivorian commercial capital, Abidjan, involved nine “Labs,” in which a broad spectrum of Africa’s top financial sector stakeholders brainstormed to produce concrete instruments, platforms and frameworks towards building a new financial architecture for the continent.
The Dialogue was held under the patronage of the President of Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara who was represented at the opening ceremony by nation’s Prime Minister Mr Robert Beugré Mambé. The event was also attended by other government officials, members of the diplomatic corps, representatives of international organizations and agencies, among others.
“The conference bringing us together today presents a real opportunity to deepen our collective reflection on the reforms needed to build an international financial system that is fairer and better suited to the realities of the contemporary world,” Prime Minister Mambé said on behalf of President Ouattara.
As Dr Ould Tah put it during the opening ceremony, “The current architecture of financing Africa’s development is inadequate and not fit for purpose,” he said. “The truth is that we do not suffer from a lack of capital: Africa has approximately $4 trillion in medium- and long-term savings.”
NAFAD proposes a systemic framework aimed at reorganising how capital and risk are deployed across the African financial ecosystem. It will focus on building a permanent implementation architecture, capital mobilisation and deployment.
“The transition from NAFA to NAFAD is not merely a semantic shift; above all, it expresses your genuine determination to overcome the structural obstacles to the large-scale mobilisation of resources to finance Africa’s development,” Dr Ould Tah said in closing remarks.
In remarks during the opening plenary, Guinea Bissau economist Professor Carlos Lopes noted that the real constraint to executing the African Union’s Agenda 2063 is finance.
“For decades, Africa has worked with its development partners, and concessional finance has played a role—particularly for the most vulnerable countries. But we have also learned its limits. It was never designed to finance transformation at scale.”
The Dialogue drew participants from a cross-section of financial sectors. They included African central bank governors, senior executives from sovereign wealth funds, regional commercial banks, regional and national development banks, securities exchanges, private equity, consignment funds, guarantee funds, and development finance institutions.
The broad and representative participation reflected the systemic nature of the financing challenge the Dialogue seeks to address.
Dr Ould Tah congratulated participants for their full engagement in the discussions and mastery of the topics addressed.
“You have enabled us to achieve results far exceeding initial expectations. This is an historic moment: the Abidjan Consensus, welcomed with immense enthusiasm, redefines the future of financing on our continent,” he said.
“By cementing the unity of the African financial ecosystem on the shores of the Ébrié Lagoon, this agreement provides NAFAD with the legitimacy and grounding necessary to uphold the ambitions of our “Four Cardinal Points.”
The Abidjan Consensus was presented to the delegates by Souleymane Diarrassouba, Cote D’Ivoire’s Minister for Planning and Development.
Read the full text of the Abidjan Consensus here.