President of Africa Development Bank (AFDB) President, Akinwumi-Adesina
The African Development Bank (AfDB) is collaborating with African countries to develop and structure innovative financing instruments to address insecurity and challenges to economic growth investment and development in the continent.
President of AfDB, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said this at the fourth edition of the Africa Resilience Forum (ARF 2021), a high-level flagship event of the bank, held virtually on Tuesday.
The event had as its theme: “Covid-19 and Beyond: Working Together for a Resilient Continent”.
The event is aimed to reflect on policies and approaches that support the continent’s efforts around conflict prevention, peace, and state-building initiatives.
Adesina stressed that there was a compelling case for innovative financing mechanisms to tackle challenges that faced the continent.
He called on all partners to work towards strengthening interventions that responded to such challenges.
“Only by working together as humanitarian, peace and development partners can we, effectively, address root causes and focus on strengthening interventions that respond to what I call disaster triangle which has to do with unemployment, environmental degradation and extreme poverty.
“Wherever you find these disaster triangles, you have instability and insecurity. There is, therefore, a compelling case for innovative financing mechanisms to tackle these challenges.
“Recognising this critical link between security, economic growth, investment and development, the African Development Bank (AfDB) is collaborating with African countries to develop and structure innovative financing instruments.
“This includes security index investment banks to mobilise resources to address the root causes of insecurity and project investments and livelihoods,” he said.
The AfDB president also emphasised the need to focus on tackling the effects of climate change and reiterated the bank’s commitment to double its climate adaption finance to 25 billion dollars by 2025.
“We have expanded the percentage of financing devoted to climate adaptation from 26 per cent in 2016 to 67 per cent in 2020.”
He further stressed the need to increase investment for social protection, safety nets, and resilient and affordable healthcare systems to reduce the effects of the COVID-19 on the continent.
“We must also prioritise job creation especially for the youth that is why the bank created the Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Multi-Donor Trust Fund, an initiative to support Africa’s entrepreneurship ecosystems that help to create 25 million jobs by 2025.
Also, he reiterated the importance of women to further drive inclusive and resilient growth through the bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa which supported women-enabled businesses.